Outside In
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Lynn’s life is full — choir practice, school, shopping for the perfect jeans, and dealing with her free-spirited mother. Then one day her life is saved by a mysterious girl named Blossom, who introduces Lynn to her own world and family — both more bizarre, yet somehow more sane, than Lynn’s own.
Blossom’s family is a small band of outcasts and eccentrics who live secretly in an ingenious bunker beneath a city reservoir. The Underlanders forage and trade for the things they need (“Is it useful or lovely?”), living off the things “Citizens” throw away. Lynn is enchanted and amazed. But when she inadvertently reveals their secret, she is forced to take measure of her own motives and lifestyle, as she figures out what it really means to be a family, and a friend.
Classic Sarah Ellis, this novel is smart, rich, engaging and insightful.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ellis (The Baby Project) crafts a thought-provoking novel about friendship and belonging. It centers around memorable 13-year-old heroine Lynn, as her home life falls apart and she seeks stability from another family. Lynn falls victim to her bohemian mother's capriciousness when she betrays her live-in boyfriend, has an affair with a married man, loses her job, and forgets to get Lynn's passport for a much-anticipated choir trip. Lynn then meets an unconventional and self-assured girl named Blossom, who saves her from choking at a bus stop. Blossom calls people like Lynn "Citizens" and herself an "Underlander," and she leads Lynn through a Vancouver she's never known, including Blossom's makeshift home in a park where she lives with her two brothers and foster father. In contrast to Lynn's typical teenage fascination with texting and clothes, Blossom and her family delight in discarded possessions, create eclectic meals, trade for goods, and exist outside the law. Though a betrayal that exposes the Underlanders is tidily resolved, the friendship between Lynn and Blossom is particularly satisfying and offers insight into materialism, family, and freedom. Ages 10 13.
