Fiction, Fiction Subjects

At Risk

Name: At Risk
Author: Alice Hoffman
ISBN: 9780425117385

by Alice Hoffman

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Overview

In a novel the Village Voice calls "memorable" and "striking", Alice Hoffman vividly portrays a family shattered by tragedy when 11-year-old Amanda is diagnosed with AIDS.

A stunning national bestseller, here is the story of a family in the tradition of "Ordinary People" and "Terms of Endearment." The Farrells are a family as ordinary and special as any family. There are parents, a son, and an 11-year-old daughter with big dreams of gymnastic gold. But a shocking tragedy consumes them, and it becomes all too clear that when it comes to love, everyone is at risk.

Synopsis

In a novel the Village Voice calls "memorable" and "striking," Alice Hoffman vividly portrays a family shattered by tragedy when eleven-year-old Amanda is diagnosed with AIDS...

Newsweek

Deeply impressive...powerful.

About the Author, Alice Hoffman

In a prolific career that began with early writings in the American Review, Alice Hoffman has expanded and developed the idea of family and community -- the forces that bind it together and the forces that drive it apart -- with understated and elegant prose and powerful and complex characters.

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Editorials

Chicago Sun-Times

Deeply moving...Sensitivity and empathy...radiate from this beautiful novel.

Village Voice

Compassionate...This is a serious, honest novel.

Jim Shepard

In its simplicity and directness and restraint there is very often a compelling power' to this novel... —The New York Times Book Review

Mademoiselle

I have rarely encountered a work that has moved me as strongly... extraordinary.

Newsweek

Deeply impressive...powerful.

Miami Herald

Within pages, the reader falls in love with this very real little girl... Moving, dramatic and painfully human.

Chicago Tribune

Brilliant...explosive...heartrending.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

With this moving novel, Hoffman has written a story about a family attacked by tragedy, and has given it a larger relevance by confronting one of the most frightening issues of our times. The Farrells are a middle-class family living in a small New England town. Ivan Farrell is an astronomer, wife Polly a photographer, eight-year-old Charlie a budding biologist and 11-year-old Amanda a talented gymnast. Hoffman has few rivals in depicting domestic scenes: the bickering between siblings, the tension between spouses, and withal, the humor and love that holds families together. Suddenly the Farrells are singled out for grief. Amanda, who has been winning gymnastic meets despite a summer-long malaise, tests positive for AIDS, contracted some five years before when she was transfused with contaminated blood after an appendectomy. In unsensationalized detail, Hoffman depicts the effects of her illness. Too stunned, angry and anguished even to turn to each other, Polly and Ivan retreat into separate worlds. Charlie is abandoned by his best friend and shunned by his schoolmates. Amanda, an average adolescent who loves Madonna records, must come to grips with the process of dying. The hysterical reaction of some members of the community is a further blow. Hoffman's sensitive handling of this material is both matter of fact and heartbreaking. Ivan's friendship with a man he meets through the AIDS hotline, Polly's search for comfort with Amanda's pediatrician, Charlie's stoic bewilderment, Amanda's bond with a young woman who is a medium (the only evidence in this novel of Hoffman's characteristic feeling for the supernatural) are all beautifully portrayed.

Library Journal

Hoffman's newest work is heart-wrenching. Star gymnast on her school team, 11-year-old Amanda yearns toward adolescence. When her illness is diagnosed (she'd had a blood transfusion for an appendectomy), her photographer mother Polly, astronomer father Ivan, and 8-year-old brother Charlie experience the expected disbelief, anger, and sorrow. However, because Amanda has AIDS they also experience rejection by old friends and trouble at school. As Amanda's life dwindles away, the family struggles, begins to dissolve, but finally reconnects. First-rate ``contemporary issue'' fiction that will leave few dry eyes. -- Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.