Small Eternities : The Aldous Lexicon - Hardcover

Michael Lawrence started his working life as a graphic designer and photographer and subsequently worked as (among other things) a television script reader, an antiques dealer, and a publicist for a traveling circus. He now writes full-time and currently lives near Stamford, England, some forty miles from the house in which he was born—the house he calls Withern Rise in The Underwood See.

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Grade 7-10–Alaric and Naia, both 16, have nearly identical lives in parallel worlds. Their parents, their house, and their circumstances are the same, with one major difference. Alaric's mother was killed in a train wreck, while Naia's mother survived. This story of alternate realities raises questions about how one's life might be changed forever by a certain turn of events. Alaric's home is dreary, dirty, and joyless and he misses his mother terribly. Naia lives in a world of light and privilege, with a clean, nicely furnished house and two loving parents. Through an association with a tree in the garden of their mutual home, the two teenagers travel back and forth from one world to the other. Working together, they try to make sense of what has happened to them and why. This is a very engaging tale at the outset. Lawrence vividly describes the same house under radically different circumstances and it becomes the focal point of the story. The dialogue contains some British slang and humor but is not difficult to follow. Ultimately Alaric and Naia trade places irreversibly, so that it is now Naia who is motherless. Readers may be left wondering what all this means, but will need to wait for the next volume in the series for a possible explanation.–Bruce Anne Shook, Mendenhall Middle School, Greensboro, NC
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