Children and YA

It makes sense that a playwright who naturally works with the difficulties of dialogue as part of his craft would be able to apply those skills to a novel.  Victor Lodato’s first novel, Mathilda Savitch: A Novel , has a lot of things going for it.  He has the too-smart-for-her-own-good young narrator (Mathilda), who is dealing with the death of her older sister.  He has the absent family members who are half-blinded by their own grief.  But most of all, he has voice.  Mathilda’s words spill from the page and capture a mixture of anxiety and recognition like the most gripping monologues manage to do.