Reviews:(by author)

Fusco, Kimberly Newton. Tending To Grace. New York: Knopf, 2004.           $14.95. ISBN 0-375-82862-1. 168 pp.              

Although Cornelia can read exceptionally well for someone of her age, her stutter prevents her from speaking very much to anyone at her high school which makes her an outcast.   This becomes the least of Cornelia's concerns when her mother, Lenore, and her boyfriend decide to leave for Vegas without Cornelia.   Cornelia is left at her Aunt Agatha's where the two develop an unusual friendship.   Agatha's rural lifestyle is at first frightening and confusing for Cornelia but soon Cornelia finds escape and comfort in the reading selection at the local library.   Cornelia would much rather hide in a book than talk to local town people where her stutter might put her in an uncomfortable situation.   With time, Agatha helps Cornelia confront her stuttering problem and Cornelia teaches her aunt how to read.   When Cornelia's mother does return only to leave Cornelia again with Agatha, Cornelia has grown independent of her abandoning mother.   The novel is really a coming-of-age story and about how Cornelia struggles to find her identity and her voice which she succeeds in both.               

Any English major will appreciate the author's take on the classroom environment that Cornelia dreads so much.   While the other children read "the copy of Tom Sawyer they use for [the] class," which Cornelia has open on her desk, in her lap Cornelia uses, "the one that Mark twain wrote," so she can compare the two copies as the class reads aloud.   In a climactic scene near the end of the novel, Cornelia must display to the teachers in her new high school that she deserves to be in the sophomore honor English class.   They question her ability because she doesn't speak aloud in class because of her stutter. Defiantly she tells them to quiz her on any of the novels, including Wuthering Heights and To Kill A Mockingbird .   She pushes through her stutter and to the amazement of the school faculty she recalls the main characters, plot, and conflicts of each of the novels.               

The chapters are short, usually one to three pages long, and each captures a different mood or situation in the story.   The words that Cornelia stutters on are sometimes drawn out too long, for example when she wants to say her own name and she stutters it says, "c-c-c-Cornelia."   I think the reader would still get the point of Cornelia's speaking problems without this overuse of punctuation but I think the author wanted to strongly convey the condition.

Recommended
Neal Schneider, May 2004

Back to Reviews D-F