Undercover

Elisa Cantor is a plain girl – rather like a tomboy. She’s not into dresses or make-up or fashion at all. She does love the outdoors and writing metaphors, though. The boys at her school get her to write little notes for their girlfriends, much like a modern day Cyrano de Bergerac.

This suits Elisa just fine until Theo starts asking her for notes. Theo makes Elisa’s heart skip a beat, but he just thinks of her as a friend, since he’s dating the oh, so popular Lila.

Elisa’s father is her kindred spirit, but it seems like he’s out of town on business all the time. This puts a strain on his marriage, so Elisa’s mother isn’t always there for her either. It seems like Elisa’s on her own – she needs to figure out what to do show more about Theo and how to save her family. Elisa says,

"When you’re undercover, you have to keep things to yourself. You have to go around with a who-cares? slouch even when there are fists of anger, fists of wanting, all inside you, pounding."

I was lucky enough to win a copy of Undercover by Beth Kephart when My Friend Amy and Presenting Lenore conducted a book drive for her latest title, Nothing But Ghosts. Boy, am I glad I did. I loved this wonderful book! Elisa reminded me so much of myself when I was her age – I was a tomboyish daddy’s girl who was good in school. That’s great from an adult’s perspective, but it doesn’t always make you popular with your peers when you’re in high school. I loved the way Elisa expressed her confidence at some things and her pain at others. It was wonderful seeing her discover her inner strength.

I also loved Elisa’s English teacher, Dr. Charmin. She should serve as a reminder to all adults to reach out to children who they perceive might be struggling with something in their lives.

This is only the second one of Beth Kephart’s books that I’ve read but I’m anxious to read more and I’m really looking forward to the adult novel she has coming out. She just has a way with words that captivates the reader and transports you into the world of the book. Her writing is lyrical and magical and I highly recommend it. show less

This modern teenage retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac is excellent, in spite of the predictability of the centuries-old but still beloved plot line.

Elisa Cantor is a high school sophomore, known more for brains than for beauty, unlike both her sister Jilly and her mother. Nevertheless she is in great demand with the guys, but only for her talent in penning poetic tributes to other girls with whom they are infatuated. But when Theo Moses wants help winning the hand of the beautiful but nasty Lila, everything changes for Elisa. She begins to fall for Theo herself.

In school, she is studying Cyrano and recognizes the parallels. She laments:

"Why can’t she [Roxanne] see that it is Cyrano’s heart and head inside those letters? Whey can’t show more she tell how much he loves her? And what does this say about people in general, that they can’t see what is standing before them? Beauty rules, every single time. Beauty is the password.”

She has no one to turn to for guidance or sympathy. Her mother is fighting with her father because he is constantly away on business. Their separations threaten to become permanent. Her older sister has other interests, revolving around her good looks and popularity. Elisa teaches herself to ice skate, and this becomes both her release and the source of redemption, not just for her, but for her whole family.

Evaluation: This lovely book was a National Book Award Nominee, and the author’s subsequent work has likewise received high praise. She has a wonderful talent for seeing both the pain and the poetry of teenaged angst. I know I want to read the rest of this author’s work. show less

I was certain that this book wasn't going to work for me- it began with more than one cliché and I mentally rolled my eyes. I don't know when I started noticing Kephart's extraordinary facility with language, maybe by the second chapter. The words in this book are muscular, flexible and entirely beguiling. The main character is a nascent poet who is gradually coaxed into herself with the assistance of a phenomenal teacher and a pond.

Read it for the glorious use of language, if nothing else.

Reviewed by Sally Kruger aka "Readingjunky" for TeensReadToo.com

Having recently read NOTHING BUT GHOSTS, I was anxious to crack open another Beth Kephart novel. UNDERCOVER was her first novel, and I'm surprised I missed it. According to the cover, Kephart was a "National Book Award Nominee" and a well-deserved one, I'd say.

Elisa has always viewed herself as more of her father's daughter. Her sister, Jilly, and her mother share a passion for make-up and fashion. They are always dressed in perfectly matched colors with every hair in place. Elisa, on the other hand, has perpetually wild hair and could care less about clothes and colors. Her passion lies in words and nature.

The only person who understands Elisa is suddenly missing from her show more life. Her father shares her interest in words and literature, but his extended business trip is keeping him from home. At least that's the excuse Elisa imagines as she tries to keep him up-to-date with letters sent to distant San Francisco. As the days and weeks pass, it's becoming more obvious that his business travel may be a side-effect of trouble in her parents' marriage.

Elisa has previously accepted her backseat in life. At home she watches her mother and sister parade, and at school she uses her talent for poetry to ghost-write inspirational love poems for her male classmates to use as they court girls that don't even know Elisa exists. All this has been satisfying enough until she met Theo.

Theo gladly accepts Elisa's poem offerings because he's head-over-heels in love with Lila. Without Elisa's words, he knows he wouldn't have a chance. He shows his appreciation by developing a friendship with Elisa, but that friendship sparks something in her she never felt before.

With her father absent and conflicting feelings about Theo filling her thoughts, Elisa seeks peace by grabbing a pair of her mother's old ice skates and escapes to the hidden ice of a secluded pond. The freedom she feels as she imagines beautiful music and teaches herself to skate helps her cope with the twisting emotions that have suddenly invaded her life.

Readers will be immediately captivated by Kephart's smooth and lyrical prose. Her words and story flow as cleanly and easily as Elisa's skates on the pond. UNDERCOVER portrays Elisa's struggle to deal with insecurities and push herself to achieve what those around her know she is capable of achieving. Teens will easily relate to her desire to fit in both at home and at school, yet not compromise her own personal spirit and view. show less

This is a beautifully written book about young Elise who is bookish, shy and awkward, but has poetry in her soul. Her voice is unique. As she struggles with classmates, her parents rocky marriage, first love and loneliness, Elise escapes to a deserted pond where whe teaches herself to ice-skate, allowing the magic of words to immerse her. The style of writing won't appeal to everyone, but I loved it. It is lyrical, moving, full of wonderful imagery and a hint of magic. A truly charming read.

How lovely it is to read a book for teens that dare escape the tiring plot about handsom, god like strangers and supposedly troubled, adolescent girls as deep as the snow in Sahara. How nice it is to read a book for teens with beautiful language and references to poetry.

In this book we meet Elisa, a young girl, who is misunderstood at home, and not really popular at school. She keeps to herself most of the time and her older sistee will not even acknowledge her at school. But Elisa has a secret, a secret she shares with almost every boy in school. Or every boy in love that is. She is a ghost writer. She write love notes for boys who wants to impress a girl. The girls are never told who the real poet is, and so Elisa can keep up the show more charade. But then Elisa falls in love with Theo, a boy she just wrote a love note for, a boy who is in love with someone else.

I really liked this book. It is gentle, moving and in a way, tender. Elisa is a very likeable character, and in many ways she reminds me of Paloma in [The Elegance of the Hedgehog], one of my favourite reads this year. Paloma has her profound thoughts and observation of movements, Elisa is preoccupied with explaining the changes in the nature surrounding her to her absent father.

Dear Dad, I can’t keep track of the changes alone, I can’t do this without you. Dear Dad, it snows, then the snow is gone, then it snows again harder, and I can’t find where I was going to inside all the weather. Dear Dad, Is this what it takes to be so good at poems, that you hurt all the time and you don’t have real friends and you have no one to talk to, so you write?

I needed the scorch of the moon and the cold on my face. I needed the stream beneath the moon and the sky full of stars. I needed ravens if there were still ravens clumped up in those trees, and if there were an owl hiding out somewhere, just one white owl, I’d climb his back and I would say, Please. Fly me anywhere.

Here’s another change I’ve noticed: The dark is more than the sun dropping off, more than the moon and the stars. It’s what you can’t see that you hope you will see, what hasn’t been that might be.

I would heartily recommend this book to any of you. Just looking at the quotes, made me want to read it again. show less

While most high schools seem to stratify into various subgroups - jocks, brains, leaders, followers, trendies, what have you - there's a larger breakdown that overlays them, and within the subgroups the same breakdown occurs: those that are in the thick of it, and those on the sidelines. The ones on the edges are the watchers, the less sure of themselves - like Elisa Cantor, they're the 'undercover operatives.' Beth Kephart's novel Undercover explores the year when Elisa slowly began to come out from undercover.

Elisa prefers staying in the background, not standing out. Her emerging talent for poetry is expressed in the brief written lines she provides to her male classmates to give to their girlfriends, passed off as their own. She's show more distant from her beautiful mother and older sister, who seem to be so many things that the world values more (and that she isn't), and with her father away on a seemingly endless business trip, she's spending a lot of her time on her own; her new favorite place is a pond in the nearby woods where, as winter comes, she teaches herself to ice skate. At school, her Honors English class is working on plays and poetry, and Elisa is shaken to realize the similarity between her providing 'metaphors' to the boys for their girlfriends and the plot of Cyrano de Bergerac. She is even more shaken to realize her growing feelings for one of those boys, Theo.

I was a bit of an undercover operative in high school myself, and Elisa came across as very real to me. The novel is narrated in Elisa's first-person voice, and she is the most fully-developed character in the novel; we see the others characters primarily through her eyes. This struck me as particularly appropriate, though, as it did in Goldengrove by Francine Prose, another story told though the voice of a teenage protagonist at a particularly self-referential stage of life. But that limited perspective doesn't detract from Elisa's appeal; she's more eloquent and expressive than the average teen, but her voice sounds true and the connection the reader makes with her is real.

I've been reading the blog of Elisa's creator for nearly a year now, and Elisa's voice sounds like it was written by Beth Kephart. This is a good thing, and so is Undercover. show less