Review Detail

Being a high school freshman is
usually traumatic enough. For Cora Bradley, however, its worse than average:
she lives in the shadow of her older brother, Nate, a notorious misunderstood
troublemaker who killed himself when he drove into a tree. The Bradley
household, once a warm and friendly place, is now cold, silent, and
overbearing. So Cora throws herself into art, drawing elaborate maps of far-off
places in her futile attempt to escape the ghosts of her small town.

Cora must deal with normal teenage
girl troubles, too, though. As she and her ex-best friend drift apart, Cora
finds solace in the unlikeliest of places: in Damian, Nates best friend, who
was in the car with him that fatal night. Damian shows her things about Nate
that Cora never knew before, but her parents despise Damian and blame him for
their sons death. What will happen when all these different points of view
clash? Will Cora come out stronger in the long run?

After hearing amazing things about
Lisa Ann Sandells stunning writing, I was more than disappointed in A MAP OF
THE KNOWN WORLD. There is wonderful descriptive prose, yesthe kind that makes
you want to stop after every period and drink in the sentence youve just read,
the kind that makes you think, Wow. This is what writing is about.

Unfortunately, this lyrical
language is interspersed with really elementary dialogue and predicaments. Cora
may be a high school freshman, but high school freshmen do NOT need to sound so
whiny, shallow, explosive, and unreasonable. I hardly felt any connection to
the characters at all, and instead wanted to smack them on their heads for
being so one-dimensional. The story, too, is predictable; you hardly need to
read the book in order to know what the ending is.

All in all, A MAP OF THE KNOWN
WORLD an admirable attempt at lyrically dealing with the difficult subject of
death. However, the lack of connection I felt to the characters undermined the
attempt. Read it once to savor the occasional delicious line of prose, but not
to feel as if this is a world that you can believe in and empathize with.