Artichoke Hearts

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I was thinking before I got to the sad part (don't want to spoilt it for anyone) that I give this book 2. I remember when I was twelve how slowly time seemed to pass and how much could happen in a very short space of time. Artichoke Hearts centres around the life of 12-year-old Mira Levenson as she reaches the point in her young adult life where she suddenly has to face up to a lot of changes - from her family, her love life and even her own body.

We follow the life of Mira Levenson as she tries to avoid spreading a simple secret about her mysterious love interest and the rest of her problems that every single woman had encountered throughout the whole book. I respected how the book didn’t choose to focus completely on ethnicity because this book is all about dealing with grief and growing up, no matter what race you are. A Big thank you to my wonderful editor and agent Sam Swinnerton and Sophie Gorrel Barnes of MBA (Two of the most beautiful and intelligent people in publishing.

She is such an advocate for people to shake off their inhibitions, discover that their voice does need to be heard and to live life to the fullest. I thought the teacher who was giving extra lessons to some of the children at the school was a good attempt at showing how important it is to listen and support teenagers. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Brimming with emotional honesty, the voices of all the characters have an authenticity that allows the painful situations to be lightened by gentle humour.

I started writing Artichoke Hearts after my mother in law Rosie Harrison (Artist and Activist) died in 2005. To be honest, at first look I wasn't expecting all that much - the cover seemed a little 'young' and the blurb just sounded average. This was a true bildungsroman (Been looking for a chance to get that in one of these reviews sooner or later) and the characterisation of Mira was so perfect and honest and I loved that Brahmachari didn’t shy away from all the gory bits of a girl growing up (I’ll let you use your imagination. She wanted to understand what was happening to her grandma and she wasn’t afraid to ask questions that didn’t have simple actions. People who are on the ‘Y’ side of ‘YA’…but also people who don’t mind reading books with a younger protagonist.

Fans of Judy Blume, Kit Pearson, Susin Nielsen, Sharon Creech, and my books (if I can be so bold as to include my name on this list) will love dipping into Mira’s world. It was an extremely poignant novel, delicately handling (though perhaps a bit too delicately - the characters don't tend to show a lot of emotion) the death of Nana Josie, with the lovely underlying message that death is a time for hope and celebration, not sorrow and grief; and you could really feel Mira’s pain at having to watch her beloved grandma slip away more and more each day. Also the growing relationship between Jide and Mira is presented beautifully – you can almost hear Mira’s shrieks of delight when Jide sends her a text ending with an “x”. Artichoke Hearts is a book that I had been meaning to get around to reading since I heard about it (which was quite a long time ago!