Review: A celebration of love and freedom
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 17, 2012
One of my new favorite authors is Charlotte Stein. She not only made my auto buy list, but she's become one of those authors I study for their mastery of craft. There are authors that have such an intimate way with setting, those with a gusto for story, those who can twist a plot like nobody's business. Charolotte Stein is one of those that has a way with point-of-view. Whether she writes in first person or third, the pov is deep and involving. I forget I'm reading. Moving my eyes over the page is not work. My husband has to repeat my name to get my attention. She's that good. Her characters feel so real. I feel so much for them. I wonder when they wonder. I doubt when they doubt. I need when they need. It's very, very cool.Sheltered is the latest Charlotte Stein I've read, and it was a five-star keeper of a book. Evie lives under the oppressive thumb of a religiously crazy, over-the-top, control freak father, but a punk she sees selling pot to a neighbor kid gets her dreaming about impossibilities that might actually be possible, if someone showed her the way with patience and kindness instead of forbidding rules and disproportionate punishments. She's never seen a movie before, never read a magazine, never, never kissed a boy or really ever touched one. But in her dreams, she explores things she would never have the courage to explore in real life. Until Van. Punk Van. Big, intimidating Van...Tender, cautious Van who is the exact opposite of her father from his dyed-hair, tattooed packaging to his artist's soul.Sheltered is a story about the gifts of love and freedom when all one has known is conditional tolerance and repression. And it is beautiful.