All the bits fit together to create a picture of entitled girlhood and head-in-the-sand adulthood.
There are also text conversations, Facebook posts, and an anonymous blog called ‘gRaCeFULLY,’ which tracks the comings and goings of Grace Hall students. Kate’s limited third person narrative allows us to take her journey, but we also have Amelia’s first person narration – which gives the reader a glimpse into a life Kate could never be privy to. There are dual narratives in McCreight’s book. With the help of Lew, a crusty police detective, Kate begins reconstructing Amelia’s life only to discover that there were many things she didn’t know about her daughter. That is until Kate gets an anonymous text: Amelia didn’t jump. Although Kate can’t quite believe her daughter would do such a thing, the police rule Amelia’s death a suicide and the case is closed. Apparently, Amelia jumped from the roof of the school. However, when Kate arrives at Grace Hall she is devastated to discover that her daughter is dead (not a spoiler: it’s on the book jacket). The accusation of cheating is clearly a mistake. She volunteered once a month at CHIPS, a local soup kitchen, and regularly helped out at school events. She excelled in athletics and was involved in every extracurricular activity under the sun. Her teachers called her a delight – bright, creative, thoughtful, focused.
The suspension is a shock to Kate becauseĪmelia had never been in trouble in her entire life. Then she gets a call from the school: Amelia is being suspended, for plagiarizing an essay. There have been a few bumps in the road recently: Kate chalks it up to teenage moodiness. Despite Kate’s busy job, she and Amelia share a close bond, likely forged because it’s always been just the two of them. She and her fifteen-year-old daughter, Amelia, live in Brooklyn, where Amelia attends Grace Hall, a hoity-toity private school. Kate Baron is a high-powered lawyer and single mom. It is this very private world that is central to Kimberly McCreight’s suspenseful and timely novel Reconstructing Amelia. Hardly anyone calls my house phone anymore – and certainly not the friends of my kids. If you got a call, you took it in full view of your parents and siblings there were ears everywhere. When I was a teenager there was one phone and it was in the kitchen. I mean, on the surface, it seems like it would be easier, right? We have phones that connect us immediately – but the flip side of that is that, because of this technology, our kids can live lives very separate from us, too. I’m sure all the mothers out there can appreciate how difficult it is to really know what is happening in our children’s lives these days.
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