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From School Library Journal

Starred review from November 8, 2024

Gr 9 Up-Sixteen-year-old Jane lives in an old Victorian house with her family, their cook, and their gardener. Jane's mother, Mina, is a famous punk musician in the band Placenta. Yet, when Mina isn't out on tour, their home life is anything but idyllic. Jane's father, Vernon, has confined Mina to the System-a series of pneumatic tubes running throughout the house that she watches her family through. Since homeschooling Jane and her younger brother, Henry, during the pandemic, Vernon has chosen to keep them home, creating an elaborate and rigid set of rules. When Jane stumbles upon a stash of security camera footage that dates back to before she was born, she begins to see the dysfunction and abuse happening in her family. With a new perspective, Jane starts to write a punk opera and works to save her mother from the System. Along the way, Jane finds her voice, gets herself back to high school and her friends, and fights against Vernon's abuse. As typical of King's work, this novel blends realism, fanciful, and genre to create a young adult feminist anthem that thoughtfully addresses issues of abuse. VERDICT Fans of King's work and teens interested in music and social issues will be drawn to this work.-Rebekah J. Buchanan

Copyright 2024 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

From Horn Book

November 1, 2024
Jane, sixteen, lives with her father, Vernon; her younger brother, Henry; house staff; and a rat in a Victorian-style mansion that has been in her mother's family for generations. Mom is a punk rock star (a "feminist archangel of compassion") who is often out on tour and is made a prisoner when at home: she's confined to a system of human-sized pneumatic tubes installed throughout the house. Jane doesn't think to question the setup -- manipulative, controlling Vernon having so thoroughly and cruelly turned her and Henry against their mother -- until she discovers "home movies" (i.e., surveillance videos) that allow her to witness the truth. She begins a process of unlearning that includes writing a punk opera called Free Mother, alerting school administrators to her educational neglect (Vernon has nominally homeschooled the children since the COVID-19 quarantine), tanking forced encounters with "suitors," and embracing her queer identity. The story begins in September 2024 and ends in March 2025, with frequent jumps in time, digressions into the fantastical and surreal, and variations in storytelling format: Jane's main narrative, song lyrics, video transcripts, lists, postcards, the rat's first-person perspective, and more. The emotional landscape is similarly vast: bewilderment, rage, regret, sorrow, empathy, enlightenment. "How easily tricked we can be. How easily influenced. How mean. How simply honest we can be. How beautifully influenced. How kind," observes Jane, in a well-earned and cathartic ending. Elissa Gershowitz

(Copyright 2024 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

From Kirkus

July 1, 2024
A white teen living a sheltered life seeks to break her rock-star mother out of the cycle of abuse perpetrated on their family. Sixteen-year-old Jane lives in a large, old Victorian house with younger brother Henry, father Vernon, their cook, their gardener--and Mina, her mother, who, when she's not out on tour with her world-famous punk band, Placenta, is confined by Vernon to a system of pneumatic tubes that traverse their house. Ever since the onset of the global pandemic over four years ago, Jane and Henry haven't been allowed to return to school, instead receiving a bizarre regimen of home-school instruction from Vernon, while Mina watches on helplessly from her capsule in the tubes. Only when Jane stumbles on a cache of home movies--actually security camera footage from around their house dating back to her parents' courtship days--does she begin to gain some perspective on her dysfunctional, abusive family life. In secret, she starts composing a punk opera to express her desire to save her mother from the life she seems trapped in. When Mina leaves to go on tour for Placenta's latest album, Jane uses her wits to mount a nascent, persistent rebellion against Vernon's toxic grip on their family's psyche. Expertly blending fabulism with hard realism and Victorian language with contemporary teen-speak, this powerful narrative examines the myriad effects of emotional and physical abuse on a family. Painful yet compulsively readable. (Fiction. 14-18)

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

From Booklist

Starred review from July 1, 2024
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* "I do not lie to God," 16-year-old Jane asserts. However, her ""father lies to God. All the time." Indeed, every word out of his mouth, including and and the, is a lie. He is the uncrowned king of the liar people and a tyrant to boot, having promulgated countless rules that Jane and her four-years-younger brother, Henry, must obey. For example, they are forbidden to leave the property, which means they're homeschooled by Vernon. No music is permitted in the house, which is ironic, because Jane's mother, Mina Placenta, is an internationally known rock star, who--when she's not touring--is confined to the tubes, a pneumatic system that runs throughout the house. Jane and Henry have been raised by Vernon to treat their mother with contempt and dismiss her as "a flake." Secrets and lies prevail until Jane learns the hard-edged truth when she begins screening tapes from the security cameras sprinkled throughout the house. Will the truth set her free? Printz Award-winning King has written another remarkable, character-driven book that dazzles with its originality. With that and its employment of fantastical surrealism, it is sui generis, and at 400-plus pages, it is one of King's most ambitious, and most successful, books. And that, God knows, is no lie.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

From Publisher's Weekly

June 3, 2024
King (Attack of the Black Rectangles) delivers a searing, surreal novel about toxic relationships and systemic abuse. Since the Covid pandemic began, Jane Vandermaker-Cook has been homeschooled by her dictatorial father, Vernon. After banning electronics and music from their "pristine Victorian prison" home in West Philadelphia, Vernon purports that Jane's mother, celebrated punk musician Mina Placenta, is a murderous, unloving "witch"; when she's not touring, he isolates Mina using an elaborate system of pneumatic tubes within the house to restrict her physical and social interactions. Now 16, Jane covertly accesses decades of security camera footage that undermines Vernon's accusations, compelling her to rally for both her mother's freedom and her own. Metaphors for the entrapment of women in situations that foster abuse crystallize in an actual system of fabricated tubes, underground stations, and spider-webbing truths that Jane processes by composing a mobilizing, original punk opera. Helmed by Jane's penetrating commentary, this unconventional narrative melds punk anthems and bewildering interludes from a shape-shifting rat with King's quirky blend of present-day issues and mind-bending twists to unlock complex, thought-provoking insight. The Vandermaker-Cooks read as white. Ages 14—up. Agent: Michael Bourret, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

From AudioFile Magazine

Jorjeana Marie portrays the innocence, resilience, and burgeoning rebellion of 16-year-old Jane, daughter of punk rock star Mina Placenta. The years of spousal abuse experienced by Mina are revealed by security tapes taken in her home. Marie's narration gains gravity and menace when Vernon, Jane's controlling, abusive father, speaks. It softens when expressing the tenderness of Mina who, when not touring, is imprisoned in pneumatic tubes throughout the house. A.S. King's authoritative voice, along with musical riffs, delineates the punk opera sections that are Jane's creative outlet. Max Meyers's threatening tones define the evil of a shape-shifting rat who promises destruction. Amid these surreal elements, Marie projects Jane's intensity, her determination to escape the abusive environment of her family, and the freedom experienced by all at the audio's end. S.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine