Ship Sooner

by Mary Sullivan

Book Overview

Envision an imaginary dial with which you can turn all sounds from your everyday experience onto the highest level of volume: that is the world of 13-year old Ship Sooner whose incredible ability to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060562404
• ISBN13: 9780060562403
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 274 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

This lovely book would make a great movie

This book takes its ingenious premise--a young girl is endowed/cursed with extraordinary hearing--and, instead of sensationalistically exploiting it, handles it with lyrical restraint: the result is a story that offers a perfect metaphor for growing up and into this world. People give Ship, as Sheila Sooner is called, a wide berth, because she hears things--everything. But the senses that help all of us engage with other people also disturb other people; every one of us struggles to find a place in the world, and one of the tricky parts is that we change this world that we're trying to fit into. Ship's story is all of ours. This book is a great page-turner. I think it would make a good movie too--if some director were interested in doing things with *sound*--perhaps cinema's last great under-used territory.

Heartwarming and Heart Wrenching

Everyone in a small Massachusetts town has secrets and they are all building up and beginning to make quite a racket in Ship's head. When Ship was only two years old her father left, leaving her mother to take care of Ship and her older sister Helen. Her mom has a hard time talking about why he left. Helen is going through teen angst and acting out all the time. Her mother's best friend Trudy is battling health problems and the fact that she's in love with the town priest. Ship is stunned to have found out secrets about her sister while spying on her. And just when things are getting too disturbing for Ship to handle, her best friend Brian disappears. Ship's world begins to crumble all around her. For a girl who can hear the flick of a lighter or the batting of an eye lash without being in the same room, suddenly she feels like she cannot hear enough. There are too many questions that need answering now. Ship Sooner sets out on a journey to find the truth and makes shocking discoveries on the way. This is a heartwarming and heart wrenching story. Mary Sullivan will captivate readers with her lyrical prose and meticulous style. The residents of Herrington, Massachusetts that Sullivan has created are eccentric and well developed.

Leads you into the true tragedies of a teenager's life

Mary Sullivian captures the true image of what somebody who is different can feel. This girl, Ship Sooner, can hear more than what she should and this curses her in a way that any girl could be cursed. Mary Sullivian leads you into Ship's life full of tragedies and unexpected happenings. She allows you to feel what Ship feels in her descriptive manner of writting, by telling only the truth of what can be. This book will pull you in and won't let you out till the very end. It is deftly written by the hand of an author who can only write the very best.

SHIP SOONER delivers!

SHIP SOONER delivers! Here is a book full of heart; Mary Sullivandraws you into the super-charged world of Ship, her life amplified by her amazing-- and amazingly well-rendered-- hearing. Ship knows all the secrets in her family and town; scenes of her most intimate spying carry a powerful erotic charge. Sullivan excells in scenes of primal power: Ship's hair catching fire at her birthday; Ship licking clean the body of the baby she rescues. I loved this magical and moving tale; Mary Sullivan is a spellbinder.

beautiful

This is a really nice book, beautifully told. The sort of strange idea (a girl with superhuman hearing) is made very realistic, surprisingly realsitic. The writing is good without being showy. I recommend this book for book groups and general readers. I loved the ending.