Unraveling

Baldini and Biederman make a powerful debut with this painfully realistic tale. Amanda Himmelfarb, 15, has good reason to feel rejected by her sniping, bitter mom, whom she's privately dubbed the Captain. Her dad, aka La La Man, and younger, seemingly perfect sister are of little help in Amanda's constant struggles to please. As Amanda narrates, the coauthors expertly calibrate the family dynamics, letting the audience see far in advance of Amanda herself why she sets herself up for rejection: in an early scene, a boy pressures her into giving him a blow job, then dumps her; later, the boy she likes at school fools around with her in secret while openly preserving his relationship with his girlfriend. When he trades Amanda a date to the homecoming dance in return for sex, the tension results from readers' certainty that she'll agree—it's like watching a train wreck about to happen. For great stretches, the verisimilitude is almost heartbreaking; luckily, Amanda speaks with wit and not self-pity. The only false note is an overly dramatic, quasi-tidy resolution–a forgivable flaw in an ambitious, timely first novel. Ages 14–up. (July)