The Facts Speak for Themselves

by Brock Cole

Book Overview

This is the story of how thirteen-year-old Linda came to be involved in the murder of one man and the suicide of another. The police and her social worker think they know the answer, but they've got... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0141306963
• ISBN13: 9780141306964
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: Puffin Books
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.4" x 7.1"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 9 and higher

Customer Reviews

painfully real bibliotherapy

: This book is extremely well written and affecting. Since this book contains a realistic portrayal of sexual and emotional abuse, The Facts Speak For Themselves would be an excellent choice for bibliotherapy. I would recommend that a teenager have someone trusted to talk over the subject matter of this book. In fact, this book could be so upsetting that a person who reads this book might need a professional counselor. Evaluation: The Facts Speak For Themselves by Brock Cole contains a sad and powerful story. Cole writes in a beautiful and simple style that gives us access to Linda?s inner thoughts. The protagonist in this book, Linda, is a victim of years of psychological, sexual and emotional abuse. This abuse is so normal for Linda that she does not recognize it as abuse. As she describes her situation Linda writes in a flat tone about taking care of her little brothers, being molested and watching the murder of her adult lover. It is heartbreaking to see adult after adult either abuse Linda or not offer her any help. Although this is a sad book, in the end Linda is removed from her situation and in a group home. Linda seems relatively happy in the home and she is grateful for the small things like having access to pencils. This ending puts a happy ending on the book that otherwise could make a reader lose all hope.

Heroic Survivor

Linda, the thirteen-year-old survivor of a disastrous family life, tells her story in this realistic and unblushing account. At the beginning of the novel, we find Linda going into protective services following a bloody and climactic debacle in which her alcoholic mother's sometime boyfriend commits suicide after shooting to death, in Linda's presence, Linda's middle-aged seducer/lover, who was also Linda's mother's employer. The novel is made up of Linda's subsequent telling of her life story to her caseworker. CHARACTERS: Linda--A born survivor: capable, brave, resourceful, and cunning. In spite of all the appalling neglect and abuse to which she is subjected, one ends the novel with the impression that she is equal to the task of getting on with her life. Sandra--Linda's mother: Good-looking, a doctor's daughter, and a complete mess. She is vain, self-centered, self-pitying, uncaring, alcoholic, depressed, willful, and incapable. She is, in fact, an exceptionally destructive train-wreck of a person, unable to manage her own life, to say nothing of the lives of her children. COMMENTS: The book is exceptionally well written in straightforward and realistic first-person language. Caution: Four-letter words are used and sexual situations are frankly described.

Fierce, unforgettable

TFSFT is the story of a thirteen-year-old girl, named Linda, who gets herself mixed up in all kinds of trouble. It starts out with he witnessing a murder/suicide and being sent to a Christian run home. After the first chapter or two, the entire book is all the past leading up to the murder and why it took place.This one won many awards, including the School Library Journal's "Book Of The Year" award. This is one of those books that you sit down to read a chapter, and two hours later, you realize your still reading it. Linda's narration was truly funny at times, and truly sad at times. But the entire time, this story was REAL. You could imagine it all taking place. It may not have been a true story, but it sure could have.A great story here...well worth the read.

Shocking and brilliantly crafted ...

This book is similar in tone to "Ellen Foster" and "Bastard out of North Carolina", the autobiography of a girl abused by her family. The protagonist is by far the most mature and capable of the three. All the more amazing is that it was written by a man who has the uncanny ability to see through a girl's eyes. Thirteen-year-old Linda has a totally irresponsible and dysfunctional mother. She is the one taking care of her younger siblings and holding her family together. Her Native American stepfather kills himself when her mother has an affair. This is only the beginning, it turns out, of a long string of boyfriends. By the end of the novel she is at the scene when the man who raped her is murdered by her mother's ex-lover. Linda is a girl forced to grow up too soon but more than rises to the challenge, a character you'll never forget.

Stunning is the only word that describes this book

In The Goats, Brock Cole showed us the resourcefulness children can summon when faced with incredible adversity. But Howie and Laura's journey was a walk in the park compared to the story of Linda, Cole's heroine in The Facts Speak for Themselves. Linda survives the death of her father, the attentions of her mother's series of boyfriends, the death of her stepfather, until she is finally at the scene where the older man with whom she is having an affair is murdered by her mother's ex-boyfriend who kills himself after committing the murder. Like Catcher in the Rye, this book is the confession of a survivor, in this case 13 year old Linda, who is finally in a position to begin to exert some control over her life. Cole's ability to read a young girl's mind is uncanny, and his feel for interior dialogue exquisite.