In this thoughtful, sensitively told page-turner of a novel-in-verse, a teenager navigates fear, anxiety, grief, and (maybe) hope after her mother suffers a devastating health crisis during an already tense summer.
On their annual vacation to Maine, white 13-year-old Claire is feeling uncomfortable. Her parents "hardly ever talk/ to each other anymore." When her mom invites her out for a mother/daughter day while her dad fishes, she groans inwardly, preferring, always, to read. During lunch, Claire's mother reveals shattering news about Claire's parents' relationship. Before Claire can respond, her mother suddenly collapses with what turns out to be a ruptured brain aneurysm.
Claire's first-person voice is authentic, reflecting both her age and the calamity at hand: "I'm crying for Mom,/ for Dad,/ for them together,/ but mostly for myself." She is every 13-year-old, swinging between secrecy (what if her father finds out what her mother confessed about their marriage?), resentment (she doesn't want to have a heart-to-heart with her aunt, she just wants her parents to "be [her] parents again"), and confusion ("Is it wrong to grieve/ for someone who is still/ alive?"). Particularly poignant and relatable is Claire's longing for an understanding friend, as well as her search for a book that can guide and comfort her ("Aren't there any books/ where a terribly ill mother/ lives?"). Joanne Rossmassler Fritz (Everywhere Blue), herself a survivor of two ruptured aneurysms, weaves in accurate medical information without weighing down the narrative. Ruptured takes on momentous subjects with delicacy and nuance. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor