The Girl with the Mermaid Hair audiobook

Sukie is an incredible character. When you first encounter her, you feel that she truly has a great life: she has a beautiful, brand-new house with her own bathroom (what teenager wouldn't kill for that?!) a lovely mother, a super-cool, fun father and so much more. She is a straight-A student, and drop-dead gorgeous with killer hair. However, like most things and people that appear perfect on the surface, we gradually are let into Sukie's real, inner world, where things are rapidly going downhill. Ephron addresses so many of the issues that teens the world over experience: feeling isolated even when surrounded by one's peers, anger and guilt, budding love. It's all done in a very sensitive way that feels so real and you find yourself absolutely falling in love with Sukie, wanting to take care of her and nurture her back to happiness. I found myself thinking about Sukie and what was going to happen to her when I wasn't reading often. Don't miss this book.

At first I was drawn in by the interesting opening and the writing style. Ephron doesn't seem to give you much detail yet somehow you get to know these characters deeply. I'm still trying to figure out how she did that...The story examines the inner life of a very driven young girl who is not what everyone thinks. No, there's no magic or powers — Sukie is just a normal girl. But we watch her world unfold to show that her relationships aren't what they seem, her family isn't what it looks like, and her sense of self is the opposite of what her peers perceive. I don't want to give anything away. I'll just finish by saying this is a very good YA drama.

good

Okay so the main character is shallow, but that didn't really bother me. The story did not go how I would think, given its name, thought it'd be more magical, but it wasn't.I think the reason I gave it this rating is that it just came at the right time to me, with her Mom being a big bitch, kicking her out, and never saying sorry to her daughter. All that stuff hit close to me, otherwise I don't see to many people liking this book.

What an unfortunately realistic portrayal of modern kids' lives. My childhood resembles Suki's more than I can ever type here.

at its core, 'the girl with the mermaid hair' is far from a simple morality tale about how girls shouldn’t be obsessed with their looks or merely about girls and their appearances. it is a smart and original piece of storytelling about what it is like to be a teenage girl. there’s a wonderful intertextuality woven into the novel: the main character sukie clearly identifies with the novel she has to read for english class, madame bovary. like emma bovary, sukie is a lonely and trapped girl who loses herself in fantasy so that she does not perceive what is real. i identified so much with sukie and her voice. the narrative voice is incredibly interesting because it gives us access to sukie’s thoughts but at the same time the narrator is all-knowing. this allows us both to experience the world through sukie and also to give us critical distance from her. we are meant to know and notice things that sukie doesn’t and not to take everything she says at face value. it is important to note that sukie is like other teenage girls in that she is shaped by other people’s definitions and expectations of her as a girl. i feel like readers’ criticisms of her as narcissistic and shallow are unfair. yes sukie is obsessed with taking selfies but i think this captures the self-consciousness of teenage girls and the performative aspect of BEING a girl in our culture. sukie often practices and takes on different voices because she imagines that is what bobo, the boy she has a crush on desires of her as a girl. there is so much going on in the novel about the private and public selves of teenage girls. i love that sukie writes down every thought and experience she has in her diary and her diary writing is such an important aspect of the novel. at heart, suki thinks, ‘I wish I knew what everyone thought of me, really, she wrote’ and i think that says so much of what the experience of being a teenage girl is like. there is also this constant self-mythologizing going on. who is sukie and how does that blur and feed into how everyone thinks of her? in taking on different voices and personas and capturing herself in selfies, sukie tries to create herself when she so often feels invisible.the novel also relates suki’s fixation on how she looks to her mother’s obsession with beauty. her mother teaches her ways of being a girl and for her that lies in her self-presentation. but the novel is critical of this. ephron comments on the faultlines in the relationship between mother and daughter and their bodies and how damaging her mother’s obsession with looks is to sukie.there are hints from the start that sukie with her beauty and perfect mermaid hair, her quarterback boyfriend and perfect family are merely illusory. sukie is obsessed with orderliness, it’s for this reason that she loves the mowed lawns of the tennis club and hates the ocean. ironic indeed considering how sukie loves her ‘mermaid hair’ and creates her ‘mermaid float.’ sukie’s need for orderliness, perfection and her fear of unearthing painful truths leads her to create a fantasy of her world as perfect. her fantasy is her way of escapism in order to bury the painful truth that she is lonely and friendless and often feels invisible. she uses the mirror as a gateway to her fantasy, seeing in its reflection a fantasy of issy as her best friend and bobo as her boyfriend. the cracks that begin to appear in the mirror as the novel progresses reflect the ways in which the facade of sukie’s perfect life begin to shatter.i found this to be a particularly powerful passage:(view spoiler)[ Nobody spoke on the way home. In the backseat Sukie was lost in thought. Issy wasn’t her friend. She was her friend in the mirror. Sukie had invented her and, judging from everything she’d seen and learned tonight, she hadn’t invented even a reasonable facsimile.“Do you think you can cause something to happen just from wanting it so much?” she asked.“I don’t get what you mean. Does this have to do with your dad?” asked Frannie.“Not really. I’m talking about loneliness.”Frannie turned around and considered her answer. For a while she seemed to be in a wilderness of her own. “Do you mean that you imagined that Issy was your friend?”“Yes, so completely that it was real.”“Oh that can happen. I believe that totally. Loneliness is powerful. (hide spoiler)]on a final note, there are also wonderful female friendships in this novel. perhaps the book is a little too neatly wrapped up as it ends on a happy note with suki reinventing herself. i still wish there were more ya books like this though that examine the experience of being a teenage girl and their thoughts and fantasies.

The Girl with the Mermaid Hair by Delia Ephron 4 of 5 stars.Click. Sukie Jamieson takes a selfie after her tennis lesson. Click. She takes one before she has to give a presentation in class. Click. She takes one to be sure there's nothing in her teeth after eating pizza at Clementi's. And if she can't take a selfie, she checks her reflections in windows, spoons, car chrome--anything available, really. So when her mother gives her an exquisite full-length mirror that once belonged to her grandmother, Sukie is thrilled. So thrilled that she doesn't listen to her mother's warning: "This mirror will be your best friend and worst enemy." Because mirrors, as Sukie discovers, show not only the faraway truth but the truth up close. And finding out that close-up truth changes people. Often forever.The Girl with the Mermaid Hair wasn't what I expected. The beginning felt very unrealistic and unfeeling. I couldn't stand the first half to be honest. The only reason I kept reading is while I wasn't crazy about the characters or even the story Delia Ephron is a good writer. The second half was almost like a different book. I really enjoyed it. While this isn't something I typically read I'm sure someone who likes say Chick-Lit would enjoy it. Over all I would give it a three but because of the ending and Ephron's prose, I'll give it a four.Reviewed by Arya at A Sea of Pages (http://seaofpages.blogspot.com)

The Girl With the Mermaid Hair was a really great read. It wasn't real action packed or anything, but you just kind of drifted through the book, enjoying it. The plot wasn't super involved, so you didn't have to think a lot about what was happening in the book. This doesn't mean you didn't feel emotions for the characters, as I found myself feeling for all the characters in some way, Sukie the most.The first few chapters I wasn't feeling for Sukie at all. In fact, I didn't think I'd like her. She really softens and becomes more likeable, more and more so as the book goes on. Sukie's little brother, Mikey, was my favorite character of the book. He was just so fun loving, and did so many funny things throughout the book.I do wish the beginning had had a bit more going on. There just wasn't a lot but hearing from Sukie in the first portion. Later there was more involvement on all the characters parts, and I found myself much more caught up reading.I'd definitely suggest this one, especially if you're looking for an enjoyable book that you can easily drift through

read Delia's newest novel; "The Lion is Inn" and loved it so reading her other novels. Even though this is a young adult book I found it totally as mature and deep as an an adult book. Told through the eyes of their 15 year old daughter who is friendless and talks to an antique mirror and the families adorable dog. The story opens with the mother getting a facelift and the father beaten up at the tennis club Sukie the daughter's tranquil studious lonely life is rippled with serious waves and things quickly gets thrown into unexpected storms! I loved the interplay between the characters and Sukie's conversations with her grandmother's antique mirror that becomes a new fixture in Sukie's bathroom. A unique roller coaster page turner that you just can't guess kept me riveted till the surprising end. Hilarious and crying at times left me wanting more of DeliaEphrons stories!!!

What an odd story! To be blunt, I absolutely *detested* this book for about the first half of it...and because I am one of those hardcore "must...finish..." readers, I was just trudging through, waiting for it to be OVER. Please, just be over...! But then, in a single chapter, Sukie's homelife takes a jump off a plane without a parachute, and I finally got to see Sukie beneath her selfies and materialism and other petty concerns. Suddenly, Sukie was a character I not only cared deeply about, but one whom I rooted for. I understood the reason for the long setup; without it, Sukie's complete transformation would have been diluted. That's why I am giving this novel a 4: it is insightful, redeeming, and moving. So push past the melodrama--I promise it will be worth the wait.

I really disliked Sukie at the start of the book, because she was so obsessive over what she saw in the mirror and being perfect. I'm glad I kept reading though, because she ended up being not so bad.

This book is sooo good for middle school girls. I'm not sure boys would get as much out of it. The writing is romantic, intriguing, and thought-provoking. Perfect for young teens.