Aftercare Instructions
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Troubled. That's seventeen-year-old Gen according to her small New Jersey town. She finds refuge and stability in her relationship with her boyfriend, Peter, until he abandons her at a Planned Parenthood clinic during their appointment to terminate a pregnancy. The betrayal causes Gen to question everything.As Gen pushes herself forward to find her new identity without Peter, the flimsy story of their undying love begins to unravel. But it's when Gen lets go of her past, the one she thinks she knows, that she's able to embrace the complicated, chaotic true story of her life.
What Reviewers and Readers Say:
'Moving, authentic, timely,' - Kathleen Glasgow
'A raw, riveting story of love and family and the strength to stay standing when both begin to crumble. Bonnie Pipkin never flinches, and the result is a novel as powerful as it is essential'. - Robin Wasserman
'Aftercare Instructions is a heart wrenching story that will touch and resonate with so many young adult readers'. - National Book Award Finalist An Na
'Nearly impossible to put down. Readers may experience joy, heartache, and everything in between.' - David Arnold
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As Pipkin's sensitive and big-hearted debut opens, 17-year-old Genesis Johnson has been abandoned at Planned Parenthood by her boyfriend, Peter, while she's getting an abortion. After, Genesis veers from place to place and friend to friend seeking solace, grieving, despairing, and raging at Peter, who seems to have disappeared at the most vulnerable moment of her life. Pipkin's chapters are framed by postabortion instructions ("Talk to Someone If You Experience Feelings of Detachment"), and screenplay-style scenes, interspersed throughout, recount how Genesis and Peter fell in love. These dueling formats powerfully underscore what feels like an unbridgeable divide between then and now for Genesis, while amplifying the role theater plays in her life: downtown New York City shows were a point of connection between her and her late father, and she auditions for a role at the urging of a boy she hooks up with during an anger-fueled bender. Genesis's conflicted relationships with her mother, grandparents, and friends are as engrossing as her breakup with Peter, and her story packs a big emotional punch. Ages 12 up.
