Things Change

Grade 8 Up-Johanna, 16, is a straight-A student with near perfect SATs. She adores Paul, a handsome senior, from a shy, self-conscious distance. When he begins to return her affections, she's dumbfounded and ecstatic. Then he hits her. Scared, she leaves him. He promises to change. Her heart and fragile ego win over her brain and self-respect and she takes him back. All the while he drinks and writes maudlin, self-pitying letters to his dead dad. As Janet Tashjian did in Fault Line (Holt, 2003), Jones adds an abusive father to give his teenage abuser pathos. The great difference between the two stories is in the deftness with which Tashjian created a truly charming abuser. Jones states over and over that Paul is funny, but often fails to show this in his interactions with Johanna. His quips are so smarmy and ingratiating that readers doubt her intelligence just because she laughs. The characters often speak without contractions, so the dialogue can be more stiffly editorial than believably teenage. Images are repeated as motifs, but most are more tiresome than meaningful. The constant references to Bruce Springsteen, which may confuse or annoy a 2004 teen, fail to move the plot or establish mood; the music serves only as a cheap symbol of Paul's anger. Johanna's struggle, pain, and final liberation are more convincingly written, and the novel shines in her scenes with Kara, a popular girl who suspects Paul's abuse. An earnest though clumsily told story.