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=// ​Goldengrove // = =By Francine prose=

Francine Prose’s //Goldengrove// chronicles a thirteen year-old girl named Nico as she and her family struggle with the tragic death of her older sister Margaret. It is a story of growth, pain and acceptance, and the measures the human mind can be pushed to in the face of disaster. For Nico, Margaret is everything she wants to be – free spirited, artistic, intelligent, thin, beautiful, poetic, sexual and almost “movie-star” like. When Margret dies, Nico becomes introverted and loses touch with all her friends, as well as the entire world around her. Life for her family deteriorates because, in her mind, Margret was the glue that held them together. Her mother falls into a deep depression that leads to drug abuse, and her father is drawn into researching and writing his novel about the afterlife. Nico, left to fill some big shoes, has to self-explore to figure out her place in this weird world for a 13 year old. Nico hates the way total strangers feign interest in her apparent sorrow and how they treat her like some kind of wounded animal they feel sorry for – Margaret would hate that kind of thing. She just wants to be left alone. After first blaming Margaret’s death on her parents for ignoring her heart condition, she learns that Margaret is named after a morbid poem. She struggles to accept Margaret’s apparently forecasted death. The story is told entirely through Nico's eyes which gives the reader a keen insight into the mind of this precocious adolescent. Though she is able to convey and grasp deep, meaningful ideas, Nico is nevertheless only thirteen. She slowly, without even realizing it, transforms herself into her sister - cutting her hair like Margaret, wearing her clothes, even beginning a dangerously inappropriate relationship with her former boyfriend Aaron, who is several years older and perhaps not entirely a gentleman. But nevertheless, Aaron and Nico seem to be the only people who understand each other and convince us that they in fact //need// each other’s company. After Nico and Aaron’s relationship becomes far too physical to be comfortable, Nico decides to end it and reveals their secret to her family. After one more awkward meeting with Aaron, Nico never sees or talks to him again. By the next summer, the family is eventually able to move on from Margaret’s tragic death. Her mother goes “clean,” her father sells the bookstore and Nico is able to appreciate her own identity.

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