  | "I have promised to be a model citizen daughter....I have confined my Shrimp time to making out with him in the Java the Hut supply closet and quick feels on the cold hard sand at the beach during our breaks, but enough is enough....Delia and I are planning a party at Wallace and Shrimp's house and I am spending the night whether Sid and Nancy notice or not. I will be as wild as I wanna be." After being kicked out of a fancy New England boarding school, Cyd Charisse is back home in San Francisco with her parents, Sid and Nancy, in a household that drives her crazy. Lucky for Cyd, she's always had Gingerbread, her childhood rag doll and confidante. After Cyd tests her parents' permissiveness, she is grounded in Alcatraz (as Cyd calls her room) and forbidden to see Shrimp, her surfer boyfriend. But when her incarceration proves too painful for the whole family, Cyd's parents decide to send her to New York to meet her biological father and his family, whom Cyd has always longed to know. Summer in the city is not what Cyd Charisse expects -- and Cyd isn't what her newfound family expects, either. With Gingerbread, debut author Rachel Cohn creates a spirited world of in-your-face characters who are going to stay with readers for a long time. |
Monday, January 19, 2009
Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn
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Characters
ReplyDeleteMain Character – Cyd Charisse, 16 years old
Stepfather – Sid, was her father's roommate at Harvard
Mom – Nancy
Boyfriend – Shrimp Flash. He surfs, and he's 5'5”
Boyfriend's Brother – Wallace, nickname Java. Owns Java the Hut coffeehouses in Ocean Beach
Father – Frank (lives in New York)
Father's kids – Rhonda (15 years older), who goes by Lisbeth. Daniel (10 years older), goes by Danny.
Daniel's boyfriend – Aaron. They've been together for 10 years after they met at boarding school.
Mother's kids – Josh, who Cyd calls Hyper Boy, and Ashley, who is six and overweight.
Sugar Pie – Cyd's friend at a nursing home. Her sister Honey Pie ran off with her bridegroom, and they died in a car wreck. She got an illegal abortion at age 18 after his death.
Ex-boyfriend – Justin. He was the lacrosse captain at her prep school in New England, which she got kicked out of for fooling around.
Summary
Cyd met her dad when she was five at DFW airport. Her burger wasn't good, so he gave her gingerbread, which was made by Miss Loretta, Luis's aunt. He bought her a doll that the store clerk had made herself, and was saving for someone special. He was on his way back to New York to be with his real family, and she was on her way to San Francisco to be with Sid. Her dad cheated on his wife. Nancy named her after a dancer-actress that was in their first movie. His wife wouldn't grant him a divorce. After realizing he wasn't going to marry her, she married Sid. Her mom contemplated an abortion.
Shrimp works at Java the Hut with his brother (they're both vegetarians) while their parents are in the Peace Corps. Cyd works as a barista over the summer there. She met Sugar Pie while doing community service for shoplifting from surgical supply stores. She used to shoplift food for her ex, Justin. She met Shrimp there who was doing community service for graffiti at a fitness place. She keeps replanning a commune. Shrimp likes to draw and send in mascots for Pop-tarts. They like to play the game “Job for a Day.”
Her mom is an interior decorator, and Sid is a CEO. Their maid is Leila, who doesn't tell on her for sneaking out to spend the night with Shrimp. The driver is Fernando, who is Nicaraguan and has a grandson with leukemia. He later gets together with Sugar Pie. She has a summer solstice barbecue and spends the night at Shrimps, which gets her grounded and sent to New York. When she's grounded, she calls her room Alcatraz. Wallace's girlfriend, Delia, gets her out for weekly dance lessons. The new barista is Shrimp's friend Autumn, and they break up. Cyd's first boyfriend was Luke who was 17 and drove a motorcycle when she was 14. She had a crush on Wallace, whose first girlfriend was Lucinda, an Australian-Indonesian.
Luis, 26 year old driver for Frank, picks her up from the airport and was told she was Frank's niece. He gets pizza with her a lot. Aaron and Daniel own a coffeehouse called The Village Idiots, which Cyd works at as a barista. Daniel calls her CC or Ceece. Aaron is in a band called “My Dead Gay Son.” Danny's mom thought his gay a sin. She got cancer, and he took care of her, and she slowly came to accept him before dying. She fooled around with Luis in the apartment, and Lisbeth walked in. She calls Cyd “Daddy's little indiscretion.” Later, they go shopping and run into Justin at the Gap.
Nancy and Sid come to New York for her last weekend, and she tells her mom about the abortion. Justin got her pregnant, and she had to wire her dad for $300 when she was in prep school. She went to the clinic alone with a fake ID (Alison Fromme) and caught a cab back in front of the 7-Eleven.