Learning to Swear in America by Katie Kennedy (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Learning to Swear in America by Katie Kennedy
Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-61963-909-6 $17.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-61963-910-2 $12.99
Reviewed from galleys R* Gr. 9-12
No ordinary seventeen-year-old, Yuri Strelnikov holds a doctorate in physics. When an enormous asteroid with the potential to destroy the west coast of the United States is spotted, Yuri travels from Russia to the U.S. to help work out a plan to prevent the disaster, but his youth and the untested nature of his research make it difficult for him to convince his colleagues that his plan is the only real chance they’ve got. To make matters worse, he is caught looking at some top secret documents, and he overhears that he will not be allowed to go home even if they manage to save the world. Meanwhile, he meets Dovie, a girl who addles his hormones and distracts him from his work but who is willing to help him with a plan for escape after the crisis has passed. The balance of wit, romance, danger, and one huge philosophical and ethical dilemma is brilliantly managed here, as Yuri tries to negotiate cultural differences while pitting the moral clarity and confidence of youth against the equally stubborn mass of experience that drives his colleagues. Meanwhile, Yuri’s experiencing the love of a family for the first time, and a goofy California family [End Page 579] at that; Dovie’s parents are tie-dyed-in-the-wool hippies, and she and her brother seek to fill in the gaps of Yuri’s social and emotional education with gentle teasing and real sensitivity. A nail-biting climax with a cinematic aftermath and an even more nail-biting resolution round out this thoroughly entertaining sci-fi disaster, romance, action/adventure mashup.
