Tunneling: A Novel

By Beth Bosworth

Rachel Finch is twelve years old and in love-not with a neighborhood boy, but with the Dewey decimal system, call numbers and the cellophane covers of library books . . . also with time travel, a superhero she knows only as S-Man and, above all, Franz Kafka. She considers herself a very different young girl-until she makes the acquaintance of a classmate who challenges that sense of otherness. In this utterly inventive debut novel, we are irresistibly drawn into a world where Rachel, who many years later narrates our story, has begun to lead a double life. Severely asthmatic and deemed bookish and delicate by her family, she takes clandestine time-bending excursions with S-Man to rescue some of history's greatest literary geniuses. Swooping in on Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and Chinua Achebe, among others, Rachel's rescue missions are a rollicking ride through literary history, while her day-to-day life in Teaneck, New Jersey, emotively reflects the civil rights movement in 1960s America. Writing with a confidence, intelligence and playfulness rare for a first-time novelist, Beth Bosworth has given us a book brimming with magical realism and boundless imagination, in which literary references, great humor and political consciousness fully blossom into a significance far beyond the grasp of a twelve-year-old girl. Witty and wise, with deftly rendered shadings of the heart, Tunneling is at once boldly fanciful and remarkably down-to-earth.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0609611038
• ISBN13: 9780609611036
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.0" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

Excellent

Beth Bosworth juxtaposes vividly imaged fantasy and hyper-reality in this story of a world hovering between destruction and fragile salvation. Rachel Finch, a twelve year old booklover, joins forces with superhero S-man to save literary history. In between her travels through time and space, Rachel must cope with growing up in 1960's New Jersey, where her family and "model town" are coming apart at the seams.The fantasy portions of this book are so well rendered that they have the pure ring of myth, and Rachel's everyday reality is evoked with all the harrowing immediacy of childhood in an era of environmental threat and social change. Moving back and forth between these two worlds, the story builds steadily toward a spectacular climax in which they collide, quite literally raising the roof.Give this one a try!