Fifteen-year-old Addy panics and runs back to her room, her heart pounding. She can't do it. She can't go to school. Addy is afraid of taking even one step out of the house. And it's worse than that. She can't hear people when they're right in front of her, yet she hears voices that no one else can. Addy feels as if she's falling apart. Where can she turn? Her parents have just split up and her one real friend is a thousand miles away. Addy wishes she were back at her old school, but she knows there's no going back. The trouble is, she can't move forward. She can't even leave her room. Margaret Buffie's Angels Turn Their Backs is a compelling, supernatural thriller about a girl whose life is suddenly turned upside down by agoraphobia.
Angels Turn Their Backs FROM THE CRITICS Quill and Quire Margaret Buffie plunges us deep into her heroine's first full-fledged crippling panic attack. Fifteen-year old Addy Jarrick has moved to Winnipeg with her mom and is suddenly incapable of returning to school. She absolutely cannot go "Out There." Addy scrambles feverishly back into her second-floor flat, desperately trying to avoid their landlord and the quirky third-floor tenant. You're on the edge for this kid from the word go. Using the immediacy of first-person narration, Addy's panic is beautifully realized. "Fear wasn't new to me," she admits. "All my life I'd been afraid." We believe her, feel for her. But this being a Buffie book, psychological drama is not enough; there's also a paranormal component. A mysterious room on their floor is being used as storage for the personal belongings of the house's original owner, Lotta Engel. The room also houses an articulate loony parrot name Victor. This moulting pet of Lotta's is blessed with all the best lines and clues about the mystery of her tragic life. The "angels" turn up in a series of Lotta's exquisite needlepoint canvases. Soon Addy is hearing voices, feeling Lotta's presence. Was Lotta demented and deranged, or is Addy? The story is peopled with likeably flawed major and minor characters. Buffie resists the temptation to make cartoons of Addy's angry divorcing parents. Another plus is that Lotta's story never threatens to overtake Addy's. The chills are warmer than a horror story in this tale, which is first and foremost a good story. It will certainly satisfy Buffie Fans. (Teresa Toten, a writer in New York, Quill and Quire) The Globe and Mail A girl hero is centre-stage in Margaret Buffie's Angels Turn Their Backs. It's Addy Jarrick's story, beginning with her parent's breakup and her move to Winnipeg with her mum. The formerly "high functioning" teen-ager begins to disintegrate: can't go to school, can't leave the house, can't get up. Panic. And more panic. Buffie's preoccupation with things heard but not seen, seen but not heard, is not absent in this very readable, psychologically acute novel.
--Susan Perren, The Globe and Mail The Expositor Needpoint becomes an important part of (Addy's) story, a stepping stone between this life and the spirit life. It is through needlepoint that Addy meets the woman who once owned the house where they are living and who appears to have endured many of the same fears and phobias. Buffie has embroidered the themes of magic and mystery into all five of her young adult novels. In Angels, she incorporates the ghost with such a light touch readers can decide for themselves whether it's Addy's imagination at work or a real ghost that she encounters. The story gets some nice symbolism from a talking parrot intertwined with a recurring angel motif. Angels is a fine addition to Buffie's collection of award-winning work.
Books in Canada Angels Turn Their Backs is a gripping, intelligent novel and Buffie's readers will likely be willing to follow her in this new direction for the sheer enjoyment of reading her excellent prose and getting to know her original, thoroughly modern characters. Simcoe Times Reformer Buffie has written a wonderful book about a girl caught up in agoraphobia. This novel is a must read!Read all 11 "From The Critics" >
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