The Opposite of Love

by Helen Benedict

Madge is biraccial and her light brown skin has made her feel like an outcast, until she spends a week with her cousin in New York City. There she befriends a small boy with skin the color of her own... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670061352
• ISBN13: 9780670061358
• Release Date: September 2007
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.9" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7 and higher

Customer Reviews

Great work from an amazing writer

Helen Benedict is a wonderful writer. Her novel, Bad Angel, vividly and powerfully portrays the lives of her inner city characters. Sailor's Wife richly conveys life in a Greek Isle and elsewhere. In the Opposite of Love she once again proves her power and insight as a novelist. It is a stunning work.

A book for all ages

A book for all ages, this story of 17-year-old Madge is a > heart-breaker and a heart-warmer all at the same time. Madge <br />> lives in a little town in Pennylvania. Her mother is an English <br />ex-con (some may remember her, the unforgettable, loveable and <br />> exasperating Brandy from Benedict's first novel, "A World Like <br />> This"). And her father is - who knows? - some passer-by from <br />Jamaica whom she never saw and her mother barely remembers. <br />> Torn by love and hate towards her mother; bruised by the casual <br />> cruelties and calculated slights that Benedict brilliantly shows <br />> to be part of the life of a teen-age girl; wounded by racial <br />> slurs, Madge finds her own way - not an easy way, but a <br />> triumphant expression of growing into a strong and loving <br />> woman who can put others before her self. And in finding her own <br />> way Madge helps us to understand the terrible sadness behind <br />> those millions of children who are being left behind - and to ask <br />> ourselves what we can do to help. <br />>