BETH KEPHART; The Heart Is Not A Size

Author: Beth Kephart
Novel: The Heart Is Not A Size
Release date: 30 March 2010
Category: Fiction

Blurb: Georgia known what it means to keep secrets. She knows how to ignore things. She known that some things are better left unsaid... Or are they? When Georgia and her best friend, Riley, travel along with nine other suburban Pennsylvania kids to Anapra, a squatters village in the heat-flattered border city of Juarez, Mexico, secrets seem to percolate and threaten both friendship and a life. Certainties unravel. Reality changes. And Georgian is left to figure out who she is outside the world she’s always known.

Review: I have never read anything quite like this before. It took me a while to get into it at first but after a few weeks of putting it off, I finally admitted to myself that novel was going to be different and I just had to get on with it. I’m glad that I did.

The Heart Is Not a Size is a very confronting novel and, I think, will effect everyone differently. There are so many different stories, problems and secrets that there is sure to be something for everyone to relate to. For me, it was the trip to Juarez, I having just come back from a month in rural Philippines and have experienced the hope of children in third world countries. Others will relate to Georgia, the girl with her heart in the right place but who still lacks courageous, or maybe Riley, who has yet to realise her full potential.

I enjoyed the first person commentary; there was not other way a novel of this density could have been written. As the reader, I needed to know what Georgia was thinking before I could understand any of the other characters. Everyone had faults. No-one was perfect and because of this the characters were so alive. I could reach out and touch them, not with my fingers, but with my own past experiences.

This is one book that I will never forgo, no matter how hard it was to face the facts. Thanks Beth for a wonderful read.