In a radical departure from her realistic fiction and comic chronicles of Anastasia, Lowry creates a chilling, tightly controlled future society where all controversy, pain, and choice have been expunged, each childhood year has its privileges and responsibilities, and family members are selected for compatibility.Īs Jonas approaches the "Ceremony of Twelve," he wonders what his adult "Assignment" will be. The palpable sense of urgency is also fueled by some well-staged romance, as well as by Bertie’s quest to discover who she is and what she’s made of. Clever mini-scripts, usually flashbacks, materialize throughout the novel like songs in a musical. The delicious descriptions of the theater’s strange powers are fascinating, the characters vivid, the dialogue smart and sassy and Bertie’s fiercely loyal fairy cohorts from A Midsummer Night’s Dream bawdy and hilarious. Mantchev seamlessly blends the richly wrought, claustrophobic world of the tradition-bound theater and its age-old dramatic productions with a decidedly modern sensibility. She must prove-in four days-that she can make an invaluable contribution to the theater or be forever banished.
Bertie was a foundling, discovered at the theater door, but management has now wearied of harboring the irreverent, unrestrained, occasionally downright destructive young woman she has become.
Seventeen-year-old Beatrice (Bertie) Shakespeare Smith has spent her whole life within the walls of the Théâtre Illuminata, a majestic and magical playhouse with thousands of players at the ready.
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