TOMATO GIRL

Book ID/图书代码： 14560008B19961

English Summary/英文概要： Eleven-year-old Ellie Sanders lives with her shopkeeper father and her increasingly unstable mother, trying not to upset the precarious family balance that she mistakes for normal. When her mother ends up in the hospital following a household accident, Ellie’s father invites the “Tomato Girl” – a beautiful young woman who delivers produce to his shop – into their house to help out.
Told from Ellie’s point of view, TOMATO GIRL opens a window into the soul of a terrified girl who clings to childhood while being forced to confront the adult world of love and madness. To save herself, she dreams of a world in which her mother gets well, her father returns, and the Tomato Girl is banished forever.
Jars line my cellar shelves. Some are filled with fists of yellow-veined tomatoes. Others hold small onions and chopped leeks, white pearls floating in an opaque sea. Sometimes the light falls on a jar of boiled quail or the slick, dark meat of a rabbit. There are unexpected moments when I see the slit of an infant’s mouth, or the curl of a tiny fist behind the glass, and I run up the steps, back into the open light of sky. I gasp for air and tell myself the past is a distant thing, no longer able to reach me or hurt me. And yet, at times, it seems the past will always send its long thin fingers toward me, reminding me of all I want to forget.
Today I carry my notebook and pen down the cellar steps. I stand on a chair and screw in a lightbulb to wash away shad-ows. Then I sit. The notebook on my lap waits like an expectant child.
Long ago, a woman stood by a river and taught me the power of release. She would say I have held things and now I need to let go.
I pick up the pen. I need to tell what I remember. I need to tell the story of a girl whose world unraveled like a torn scarf . . .

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 關於一個11歲小女孩Ellie的感人故事，家庭因素使這個小女孩被迫提早面對大人世界的混亂與複雜。然而蕃茄女孩的來到，更讓她只能透過幻想來逃避目前的悲慘生活。

Awards/获奖情况：From Publishers Weekly
The absorbing, unsettling debut from Pupek centers on 11-year-old Ellie Sanders, who has already seen a lot of heartache in her short, rural mid-20th-century Virginia childhood. Her beautiful but troubled mother, Julia, who today would probably be diagnosed as bipolar, has frequent outbursts necessitating restraints and horse tranquilizers, administered by Ellie’s father, Rupert. When a pregnant Julia suffers a bad fall, Rupert uses the incident to bring home more trouble, in the form of Tess, the teenage tomato girl who supplies his general store with home-grown produce. Intended as a caretaker for Julia and Ellie (and a bedmate for himself), Tess, who has troubles of her own, instead initiates a series of increasingly horrific events that leaves the family irreversibly altered. Issues of racial and religious intolerance are touched on lightly, but the real focus of this accomplished debut is the fatalistic accounting of the events engulfing Ellie. Although Ellie’s voice is not always consistent with her youth, she’s an effective narrator whose storytelling naïveté nicely underscores her innocence. (Aug.)

About the Author/作者介绍： Jayne Pupek, who lives near Richmond, is a Virginia native and a former social worker. Though "’Tomato Girl"’ is her first novel, her writing has appeared in many literary journals. She is the author of a book of poetry titled "’Forms of Intercession.

Format:HARDCOVER

Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE(到期可授)

Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE

Sales in other countries/其他国家销售情况：

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