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Book Review of Tomato Girl

Tomato Girl
Angeleyes avatar reviewed on + 217 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 4


Tomato Girl deals with difficult subject matter - mental illness, abuse, racial issues and criminal activity - but Pupek weaves a beautifully written story. The characters are so real you quickly become absorbed with their world and their story.

Written from the point of view of 11 year old Ellie Sanders, you instantly fall in love with the heart-wrenching tale of this poor little girl. You feel her pain, as well as her hopes and dreams.

Ellie Sanders tells her story through the innocence and hope of a young girl on the brink of puberty, growing up in the rural south of the early 1960's. Each character is introduced through her young and unprejudiced eyes. Pupek reveals each character through the unflinching powers of observation of a young girl, who sees but does not always fully understand the significance of her observations, you feel her growing unease; her sense that events set in place by the adults in her life has the potential to unravel her fragile world. On a psychological level the book examines the dynamics of mental illness on family, the unquestioning love of a child for a parent; a child's ability to adapt to the environment in which they were raised and to interpret it as "normal", and how often it is us "the adults" that fail the child.

This is one of those books that breaks your heart, but you can't quit reading.