Can't Get There from Here
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Todd Strasser, author of the powerful and disturbing Give a Boy a Gun, again focuses on an important social issue as he tells a thought-provoking, heart-wrenching story of young lives lost to the streets—and of a society that has forgotten how to care.
Her street name is Maybe. She lives with a tribe of homeless teens—runaways and throwaways, kids who have no place to go other than the cold city streets, and no family except for one another. Abused, abandoned, and forgotten, they struggle against the cold, hunger, and constant danger.
With the frigid winds of January comes a new girl: Tears, a twelve-year-old whose mother doesn’t believe her stepfather abuses her. As the other kids start to disappear—victims of violence, addiction, and exposure—Maybe tries to help Tears get off the streets…if it’s not already too late.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Strasser's (Give a Boy a Gun) largely bleak novel centers on a group of homeless teens attempting to survive on the streets of New York City during a frigid winter. Several don't make it, victims of alcohol poisoning, strangulation or suicide. Narrator Maybe (wont to answer questions with that noncommittal word) escaped from an abusive home to join what she calls "an asphalt tribe that roamed the streets searching for food and shelter." Maybe's character gradually comes into focus and, as it does, Strasser reveals her perception of the dead-end life around her. Musing on the pain that one of her foundering friends feels, Maybe concludes, "It was a pain from inside. The pain of this cold, hungry, dirty life where nobody cared whether you lived or died. Where you were not even a name." However, the author does not delineate many of the other street urchins' characters. This season's The Blue Mirror by Kathe Koja and Ineke Holtjwik's Asphalt Angels paint a more realistic picture of life on the streets and the ways in which homeless kids can be exploited by others and by each other. For Maybe and for Tears, a 12-year-old who left home when her mother refused to believe that the girl's stepfather was sexually abusing her, there are hopeful futures thanks to the intervention of a caring librarian. But repetitive scenes and dialogue at times stall the pace of the narrative and weaken its impact. Ages 12-up.
