Graffiti Moon – Cath
Crowley
Pages:
257
Publisher:
Knoph
Release
Date: 14th
February 2012
Edition:
US hardback
Other
Titles by this Author: A Little Wanting Song
Senior
year is over, and Lucy has the perfect way to celebrate: tonight she’s going to
find Shadow, the mysterious graffiti artist whose work appears all over the
city. Somewhere in the darkness, he’s out there, spraying colour, spraying
birds and blue sky on the night. And Lucy knows that a guy who paints like
Shadow is someone she could fall for – really fall for.
The
last person Lucy wants to spend this night with is Ed, the guy she’s managed to
avoid since punching him in the nose on the most awkward date of her life. But
when Ed tells Lucy he might know where to find Shadow, the two of them embark
on an all-night search to places where Shadow’s pieces of heartbreak and escape
echo off the city walls. And what Lucy can’t see is the one thing that’s right
before her eyes.
From
Cath Crowley comes an exhilarating adventure set against a moonlit cityscape –
one night of art and poetry, humour and longing, anticipation and risk, and
(maybe) love.
Graffiti
Moon is one of
those books which have been praised left, right and centre in the blogging
world in a way that put my expectations impossibly high.
Cath Crowley’s prose is
beautiful, flowing and incredibly poetic. The images that she creates with her
words are breath-taking and I’m pretty convinced that she could make a shopping
list sound pretty. Cath Crowley captures the beauty and artfulness in
everything; from riding a bike down a hill to looking at a piece of art to
thinking about a boy.
Not only is Graffiti Moon written beautifully, the
characters are wonderful. Each of them is vividly and individually portrayed.
There is a mixture of the wacky, the worrying, the adorable, the questionable
and the loyal, just like in life. If you’re lucky, that is. They’re such a
integral part of Ed ad Lucy’s story that they are not secondary characters at
all and play equally important roles in the events of one night in Melbourne.
One of the things that I loved
most about Graffiti Moon was the
emphasis on art. I’m a big art fan; I even used to be fairly decent at it (an A
at GCSE, thank you very much!), so when it has a presence in a YA novel it
really makes me smile. But what’s special about the art in Graffiti Moon is that it’s not traditional art; it is mainly
graffiti (obviously) and glass-blowing. Now, I love a good piece of graffiti,
it really is art – I’m especially fond of lots of the pieces around Brighton;
they’re brilliant. Glass-blowing is something that I sadly don't have very much
experience with. I have seen it being done, however, and I was captivated. I
love the idea of science and artistic talent coming together to create
something individual and completely spectacular.
Though I thoroughly enjoyed Graffiti Moon, the ridiculous hype did
take and edge off that I think would have made it for me. Saying that, I’m
definitely eager to get my hands on A
Little Wanting Song.
Sophie
So it lived up to expectation! Excellent.
ReplyDeleteI cannot wait to start this book, it sounds utterly amazing!!
ReplyDelete