Stolen by Lucy Christopher
Christopher, Lucy. Stolen. New York: Chicken House (Scholastic Books, Inc., 2010.
299 pages, $17.99, ISBN: 978-0-545-17093-2
This book was a 2011 Printz honor award winner and is recommended for grades 9 through 12.
One minute, Gemma is in the Bangkok Airport having coffee with a handsome young man and the next – she is gone.
What starts out as a vacation with her parents to Vietnam ends up something quite different when 16 year old Gemma Toombs meets a young man known as Ty. Ty has been traveling the same route from London as Gemma and her family and the two, accidently, meet up in the airport coffee bar. It turns out-the meeting is not so accidental as Ty has plans for Gemma - plans it appears he has been making for some time.
“You blinked quickly when I looked at you, and turned away, as if you were nervous… as if you felt guilty for checking out some random girl in an airport. But I wasn’t random, was I? And it was a good act. I fell for it. It’s funny, but I always thought I could trust blue eyes. I thought they were safe somehow. All the good guys have baby blues. The dark eyes are for the villains… the Grim Reaper, the Joker, zombies. All dark.”
With that meeting, and the help of drugs, Ty spirits Gemma away to the solitude of the Australia outback. His intentions: To keep her – there - with him.
According to the book jacket, Stolen is told in the form of a letter from Gemma to her captor. It actually reads like very detailed journal entries of the events surrounding their time together. The story plays out as a taut psychological drama between Gemma and Ty as they come together in their respective roles as kidnapper and victim. As the story unfolds we feel the emotions and see the actions of someone held against their will, but also those of her kidnapper, who feels compelled to try and show Gemma that she belongs with him. The story unleashes a “roller coaster ride” of emotions about who Ty is and what does he really want. We know he’s wrong for kidnapping Gemma but at times, one feels an aching sorrow for him.
The story is actually the story of three characters – Gemma, Ty, and the Australian Outback. Lucy Christopher paints a picture of the Australian outback that comes to life in all of its stark isolation. Throughout her book, Ms. Christopher describes the land and how life exists in the desert conditions. The setting serves to increase Gemma’s sense of isolation and despair as it is so very foreign to her. Without this setting, the story would lose a lot of its power.
“But it was good to see the world through the door, even if it was full of nothing.”…It was so big, that view. I’ll never remember it perfectly. How can anyone remember something that big? I don’t think people’s brains are designed for memories like that. They’re designed for things like phone numbers, or the color of someone’s hair. Not hugeness.” (49)
“The land stretched on and on, never ending. No tracks. No telegraph lines. There was nothing to say that humans had ever been there. Only me.” (181)
And finally as this story draws to a close, how will justice be served or will it?
Having read this book by Lucy Christopher, I will definitely be reading her book Flyaway and any subsequent books she may write. Even though, the topic is totally different, the emotional impact reminds me of Jacqueline Woodson’s If You Come Softly.
