Monday 23 January 2012

A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

“Cripes Miss Wilcox, they're not guns,' I said.
No, they're not Mattie, they're books. And a hundred times more dangerous.”
Jennifer Donnelly, A Northern Light



I absolutely love the way Jennifer Donnelly writes. She does so in such a way that you can’t help but feel completely enveloped in her stories and as though you are actually watching the happenings of her stories occur. A Northern Light takes place in 1906 and is an interesting story of that time. 

"Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey has big dreams but little hope of seeing them come true. Desperate for money, she takes a job at the Glenmore, where hotel guest Grace Brown entrusts her with the task of burning a secret bundle of letters. But when Grace's drowned body is fished from the lake, Mattie discovers that the letters could reveal the grim truth behind a murder.

Set in 1906 against the backdrop of the murder that inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, Jennifer Donnelly's astonishing debut novel effortlessly weaves romance, history, and a murder mystery into something moving, and real, and wholly original." (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books)

The mystery in this book is based on an actual event that took place on July 12, 1906. Donnelly knew of the story from her grandmother and she decided to add her own spin to it, bringing in Mattie Gokey, and weaving the story of Mattie and Grace together. I love that Mattie has a “word of the day” in which she looks up a new word in the dictionary every day and she attempts to use them in a sentence throughout her day. She also has “word duals” with her best friend, Weaver, which are funny to read about. This book deals with many issues of the time in which this story takes place and I hope you will give it a chance or tell someone you know about it.

http://www.jenniferdonnelly.com/nl_home.html
http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/hmh/site/hmhbooks/bookdetails?isbn=9780152053109

To find out what another blogger had to say about this book, please go to: 
http://marjoleinbookblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/northern-light-by-jennifer-donnelly.html

Donnelly has also written another fantastic book, Revolution, which is my favourite young adult book. I will not go into detail about it on here, but if you are interested, please check out the following links below:


http://www.jenniferdonnelly.com/rev_home.html
http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385737630

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