ABOUT THE BOOK
Identical tackles perhaps the most difficult subject matter of all. It is about identical twins whose father is sexually abusing one of them.
I chose this subject matter because the issue touched the lives of three of my friends. Today, they are successful, beautiful women who you would never believe this might have happened to. I want readers to know it is possible to find a way beyond this terrible place, into a brighter future.
BOOK EXCERPT
YOU KNOW MY STORY
Mirror Mirror
When I look into a
Life
was radical
right after I met
the monster.
Later, life
became
harder,
complicated.
Ultimately,
a living
hell,
like swimming
against a riptide,
walking
the wrong
direction in the fast
lane of the freeway,
waking
from sweetest
dreams to find yourself
in the middle of a
nightmare.
Don’t you? All about
my dive
into the lair of the monster
drug some people call crank.
Crystal. Tina. Ice.
How a summer visit
to my dad sent me
into
the arms of a boy — a
hot-bodied hunk, my
very first love, who led
me down the path to
insanity.
How I came home
no longer
Kristina Georgia
Snow, gifted high
school junior, total
dweeb, and
perfect
daughter, but
instead a stranger
who called herself Bree.
How, no matter
how hard
Kristina
fought her, Bree
was stronger, brighter,
better equipped to deal
with a world where
everythingmoved at light
speed, everyone mired
in ego. Where “everyday”
became
another word
for making love with
the monster.
REVIEW FOR GLASS
REVIEW FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY:
Hopkins’s hard-hitting free-verse novel, a sequel, picks up where Crankleft off. Kristina now lives in her mother’s Reno home with her baby, but constantly dreams of “getting/ high. Strung. Getting/ out of this deep well/ of monotony I’m/ slowly drowning in.” When her former connection turns her on to “glass”: “Mexican meth, as/ good as it comes. maybe 90 percent pure,” Kristina quickly loses control again. She gets kicked out of her house after her baby gets hurt on her watch, starts dealing for the Mexican Mafia (“No problem. I’ll play straight/ with them. Cash and carry”) and eventually even robs her mother’s house with her equally addicted boyfriend. The author expertly relays both plot points and drug facts through verse, painting Kristina’s self-narrated self-destruction through clean verses (“My face is hollow-/cheeked, spiced with sores”). She again experiments with form, sometimes writing two parallel poems that can be read together or separately (sometimes these experiments seem a bit cloying, as in “Santa Is Coming,” a concrete poem in the shape of a Christmas tree). But in the end, readers will be amazed at how quickly they work their way through this thick book-and by how much they learn about crystal meth and the toll it takes, both on addicts and their families. Ages 14-up. (Aug.)