Freymann-Weyr, G. (2009). After the Moment. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 328 pages.
Leigh Hunter thinks that he is going to have an ordinary junior year in high school, but when his stepsister’s father dies and she asks him to move from New York to Maryland to be there for her, his plans are changed. Leigh has lived with his mother since his parents’ divorce, and living with his father proves to be an interesting challenge. Leigh meets a girl named Maia, who is slowly recovering from anorexia and self-injury (in the past, she burned herself with lit cigarettes and cut the bottoms of her feet). They fall in love over the summer, but their relationship is tried by a traumatizing event where Maia is date-raped by fellow students, and it is captured on film. I found this book to be interesting in that I can’t quite place a finger on what demographic it is geared toward. It was different to read about “issues” that are generally associated with females (i.e. anorexia, self-injury) from the male perspective. Readers are informed from the beginning that their relationship does not last; it doesn’t work – which is a sharp contrast to the copious talk and comparisons to romance novels (Leigh’s mother writes them, Leigh’s stepsister reads them). Leigh also struggles internally with what road his life is meant to travel (if/where he should go to college), whether or not he believes in God, and what the war in Iraq means to him and the country. Sometimes the comments on the war in Iraq were a bit… off-color… out of place, even.
Add A Comment