The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone
Adele Griffin
ISBN: 9781616953607
Published: August, 2014
Pricing
Paperback $11.99
Description
From the moment she stepped foot in NYC, Addison Stone’s subversive street art made her someone to watch, and her violent drowning left her fans and critics craving to know more. I conducted interviews with those who knew her best — including close friends, family, teachers, mentors, art dealers, boyfriends, and critics — and retrac...
From the moment she stepped foot in NYC, Addison Stone’s subversive street art made her someone to watch, and her violent drowning left her fans and critics craving to know more. I conducted interviews with those who knew her best — including close friends, family, teachers, mentors, art dealers, boyfriends, and critics — and retraced the tumultuous path of Addison’s life. I hope I can shed new light on what really happened the night of July 28.
–Adele Griffin
Media
“A JUNIOR LIBRARY GUILD SELECTION”
“Only a writer as fierce and imaginative as Adele Griffin could bring us the real story of Addison Stone, a true talent and a bonafide star.”
—Daniel Handler, author of Why We Broke Up
“A beautifully executed and riveting novel from an extraordinarily talented writer. Addison Stone will haunt you. Hers is a story you do not want to miss.”
—Courtney Summers, author of the Cybil-award winner Cracked Up to Be
“A faux biography of a deceased teenage rising star in the art world, [built] around interviews from people involved in Addison’s life before she died, excerpts from media coverage of her rapidly growing fame, photographs of Addison and her friends, and images of her artwork.... Griffin offers incisive commentary on mental illness and the frenzy around (and pressures induced by) celebrity, especially surrounding young women. Defined primarily by the contradictory accounts of those around her, Addison remains something of a cipher even by book’s end.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone
“Griffin, a two-time National Book Award finalist and one of the best YA authors around, attempts something very different here: a Rashomon-like take on a young girl’s life, highlighted by photos of the girl and her art, all in an attempt to put the unknowable Addison more within the reader’s grasp… A terrific experiment, something fresh and hard to put down. It gives a sense of both the artistic temperament and the nature of madness—and the sometimes thin line in between.”
—Booklist, Starred Review on The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone
“Compelling and tragic from the very first page ... [the interspersed media layers] level upon level of reality to the story. Readers will be fascinated with the novel and caught up in the drama right up to the end.”
–School Library Journal on The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone
“As readers learn more about Addison’s life, struggles, and the night she died, they will be pulled in by her story and be left with the sense that maybe the biggest question isn’t what happened the night Addison died…but who Addison really was. A moving story of art, fame, and tragedy.”
–Mystery Scene on The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone
“Griffin's mixed media approach is fresh and welcome; art and photographs dot the pages of a compelling biography. ”
–The Romantic Times on The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone
“Addictive ... Despite all of the photos and paintings and interviews, Stone remains an enigma ... As characters debate the true nature of Addison Stone, they reveal just how little they know each other and themselves, and how much they project their own beliefs, fears, and hopes onto the world. ”
—The Daily Beast on The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone
“An acute examination of a young woman’s troubled mind as much as it’s a mystery ... that she remains an enigma, even at the fascinating novel’s end, somehow makes Addison’s death all the more harrowing.”
–Boston Globe on The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone
“Intricate, intoxicating novel .... This compelling story can be read on many levels, from a multi-voiced meditation on a brief, bright life in the Big Apple to an exploration of the biographer’s almost impossible task: the discovery and distillation of another’s complex self.”
–The Washington Post on The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone
“A layered homage to the tortured painter, but also an exercise in structure and discipline, complete with pictures, paintings, media clips and more.”