Summary:
Sarah and her best friend (boyfriend) Curtis plan to spend their summer watching the decomposition of a calf for their science project. Unfortunately for Sarah, her grandmother has other plans. Grandma Z has swooped Sarah up on a trip to Rome to visit the seven pilgrimage churches. While on this journey, Sarah learns a lot about herself, her family, and the world around her. She begins to realize that her parents and her Grandmother are not necessarily the people she believed they were originally.
My thoughts:
Everything is written through Sarah's eyes. This is her journal, so we explore things directly through her writing. She is fairly honest throughout the story, but the end is a little drawn out. Her revelations take a long time to actually come to even though the lessons have already been discussed. This interrupts the flow of the book to me. I felt like I could put the book down with about 15 pages left and not pick it back up. Up until that part, this book has all of the things that we loved about Diary Queen. The characters are fully developed inside and out. Sarah's problems are shown just as much as her strengths. She identifies her actions and the decisions behind her actions with clarity of a young woman. She also fully describes Grandma Z. We get initial reactions as well as deeper reflection as the story goes on. The rest of the family and Curtis are also investigated to a degree in which Sarah is using them to define herself. The loveable characteristics of the robust characterization is just something that Murdock is known for. These are real characters with everything laid out to the readers.
Sarah and her best friend (boyfriend) Curtis plan to spend their summer watching the decomposition of a calf for their science project. Unfortunately for Sarah, her grandmother has other plans. Grandma Z has swooped Sarah up on a trip to Rome to visit the seven pilgrimage churches. While on this journey, Sarah learns a lot about herself, her family, and the world around her. She begins to realize that her parents and her Grandmother are not necessarily the people she believed they were originally.
My thoughts:
Everything is written through Sarah's eyes. This is her journal, so we explore things directly through her writing. She is fairly honest throughout the story, but the end is a little drawn out. Her revelations take a long time to actually come to even though the lessons have already been discussed. This interrupts the flow of the book to me. I felt like I could put the book down with about 15 pages left and not pick it back up. Up until that part, this book has all of the things that we loved about Diary Queen. The characters are fully developed inside and out. Sarah's problems are shown just as much as her strengths. She identifies her actions and the decisions behind her actions with clarity of a young woman. She also fully describes Grandma Z. We get initial reactions as well as deeper reflection as the story goes on. The rest of the family and Curtis are also investigated to a degree in which Sarah is using them to define herself. The loveable characteristics of the robust characterization is just something that Murdock is known for. These are real characters with everything laid out to the readers.
