Twenty-four Hours by Margaret Mahy

Having lived a privileged and rather sheltered life, Ellis seeks adventures before going off to college and so takes a trip with a former classmate who introduces him to a world he never knew existed. Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Review Seventeen-year-old Ellis isn't quite sure how he got into this mess, but it's so interesting that he just can't bring himself to get out of it. Now was the time to say a polite good-bye and make for home. But wouldn't that good-bye be rather like walking out before the end of the film? On holiday from school, Ellis is accosted by barefoot Jackie, a distant childhood acquaintance, who commandeers his car and introduces him to Ursa, Leona, and Fox--siblings who are as otherworldly as three sisters in a castle. Their strange abode, the ramshackle Land of Smiles motel, is a magnet for the wild and weird. Once there, it is as if conventional Ellis has fallen down the rabbit hole. His four new friends draw him into their upside-down world, and before he knows it, Ellis has liberated a stolen computer, rescued a baby, talked a jumper off a roof, had his heart broken, and learned the true nature of life and death--all in the course of one day. In 24 Hours, veteran young-adult author Margaret Mahy candidly explores an underworld of juvenile drinking and fast driving that oftentimes adults are loath to admit exists. But many of today's teens will recognize that landscape as real, and appreciate Mahy's honesty in addressing it. An exciting rush through real life at breakneck speed, this rowdy adventure will have teen readers wholeheartedly chiming in with Ellis when he remarks, I'm too much a part of the story now.... I've got to know how it ends. (Ages 13 and older) --Jennifer Hubert From Publishers Weekly Mahy (Memory; The Changeover) once again captures age-old yet contemporary adolescent sensibilities. Ellis, an aspiring actor who has just graduated from prep school, runs into an old public school friend who leads him on a 24-hour escapade into a very different social stratum. Together they end up in the Land-of-Smiles, a run-down former motel and gathering place for aging activists, tattoo artists, hairdressers and other fringe characters. Ellis develops a crush on Leona, the middle of three sisters who preside over the hotel and who have virtually raised themselves. For Leona, he embarks on a chase to find a kidnapped child, leading him simultaneously to the culpritDa boy from his own privileged societyDand to a newfound sense of self. Mahy laces Ellis's narrative with Shakespearean references both to contrast the hero's wealthy circumstances with the poverty of the Land-of-Smiles and to discuss metaphorically the prospect of death for those who fear it and those who do not. These references tend to romanticize hardship (If you live our sort of life you get to love things that don't turn out quite right, says Leona's older sister), but the quick pace and assemblage of quirky, appealing characters will hook readers. Ages 12-up. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Publishers Weekly Mahy (Memory; The Changeover) once again captures age-old yet contemporary adolescent sensibilities. Ellis, an aspiring actor who has just graduated from prep school, runs into an old public school friend who leads him on a 24-hour escapade into a very different social stratum. Together they end up in the Land-of-Smiles, a run-down former motel and gathering place for aging activists, tattoo artists, hairdressers and other fringe characters. Ellis develops a crush on Leona, the middle of three sisters who preside over the hotel and who have virtually raised themselves. For Leona, he embarks on a chase to find a kidnapped child, leading him simultaneously to the culpritDa boy from his own privileged societyDand to a newfound sense of self. Mahy laces Ellis's narrative with Shakespearean references both to contrast the hero's wealthy circumstances with the poverty of the Land-of-Smiles and to discuss metaphorically the prospect of death for those who fear it and those who do not. These references tend to romanticize hardship (If you live our sort of life you get to love things that don't turn out quite right, says Leona's older sister), but the quick pace and assemblage of quirky, appealing characters will hook readers. Ages 12-up. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. From School Library Journal Grade 9 Up-Take a walk on the wild side in an unnamed New Zealand city with aspiring actor Ellis, 17, who falls in with Jackie Cattle, a disreputable former schoolmate. Jackie uses Ellis to crash an elegant lawn party and pry Ursa and Leona, two beautiful sisters, from the nasty clutches of their rich host, Christo. Ellis drives the girls home to the weird, otherworldly Land-of-Smiles hotel, where their profane, scruffy surrogate family sweeps him into drunken oblivion. He and his newfound friends soon discover that a baby abandoned to their care has been kidnapped. A high-speed car chase ensues, Ellis falls in and out of love with Leona, and he gets a tattoo before puzzling out the identity of the kidnapper. The climax involves Ellis quoting Shakespeare from the dizzying heights of the old public library rooftop to save the baby from the suicidal Christo. Bizarre as it sounds, this energetic novel will entertain mature readers. A subplot about Simon, a former friend of Ellis's who committed suicide, is too abbreviated to carry much emotional weight. Otherwise, this is an edgy and highly charged introduction to some interesting characters. Joel Shoemaker, Southeast Junior High School, Iowa City, IA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Gr. 9-12. Friday at 5:10 p.m., 17-year-old Ellis is a restless, curly-haired, aspiring actor, just returned from prep school. Saturday at 4 p.m., he is a bald, tattooed hero on the television news. Set in New Zealand, this gripping novel follows Ellis through the intervening hours as the tension escalates with each new plot ingredient: a rebellious school friend; a chichi garden party; the host's disturbed son; beautiful sisters who live in a decaying inner-city motel; a kidnapping; unraveled family secrets; and a wild car chase ending in the rooftop rescue of a baby. In language both lush and unflinching, Mahy simultaneously develops both the exhilarating external action and Ellis' stumbling inner momentum as he confronts the new and learns to draw on his own resources. Readers may find some of the plot twists contrived (Ellis coaxes a suicidal teen off the roof with Shakespeare), but they will be drawn to the richly depicted characters' intelligent moxie, the rebellious struggle for self, the buffoonish adults, and the novel's breathless pace. Hip, literary suspense for older teens. Gillian Engberg Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One: 5:10 P.M. -- Friday Home. Home from school. Holidays. And here he was -- out on the town, but on his own. As he walked through the early evening, bright with midsummer light, Ellis saw the city center glowing like a far-off stage. But, although the sunlight was finding its way so confidently between hotels and banks, shops and offices, the city was threatened by a storm. To the north, between glassy office buildings, he could see bruised clouds, polished by a lurid light, rolling across the plain toward the town. Most of the other people in the street were going in the same direction as Ellis, probably making for the cinema complex that dominated the eastern end of the city center. He looked with interest at the few faces coming toward him, half hoping to see someone he recognized. However, as yet, he had not seen a single person he knew. I can always go to a film, he thought, and patted his back pocket as if the money there were a good-luck charm. The traffic lights changed. Glancing to the left as he crossed the street, Ellis saw the city council had installed new streetlights since he had last walked that way. Retreating, like precisely spaced blooms in a park garden, they rose on long green stems that curved elegantly at the top, then blossomed into hoods of deep crimson. FOLEY STREET, announced brass letters on a black background. At the far end of the street he saw the old library he had visited regularly as a child, bracing its stone shoulders against a constricting cage of platforms, steps, and orange-colored piping. Wide dormer windows looked toward Ellis from under deep, dipping lids, tiled with gray slate. Several streets away, a new library, complete with a computerized circulation system and a much-praised information retrieval program, would no doubt be working busily. But the old building was still there, transformed into apartments, one of them owned, he suddenly remembered, by country-dwelling friends of his parents. He guessed, looking at the scaffolding, that the company that had bought the old library must be adding a third floor to the original two. More changes, thought Ellis a little ruefully, although he also wanted the city to surprise him in some way -- to put out branches...break into leaf...burst into gigantic laughter. Free, thought Ellis, and he might have skipped a little if it had not been such a childish thing to do. Well, not quite free. University next year -- okay! Okay! That was decided. But, after all, the university had a drama society and a proper theater, so they must need actors. And he would have adventures, moments of revelation, sex, even love. The coming year, he decided, would be a year of transformation. I'm going to be an actor, said the voice in the back of his head. I really am! I am going to be an actor, Simon had also declared last year, casually but quite definitely. And then, later...forget acting! I'm into sex these days, he had said when Ellis, excited by the prospect of the Shakespeare Fantasia planned for the end of the year, had auditioned successfully for the part of Claudio in a scene from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. But, only two weeks after saying this, Simon had killed himself. He had, after all, been into something much more dangerous than sex. He had been in love, and love had failed him. Somewhere behind Ellis on Foley Street a clock struck the quarter hour with a soft but significant chime. Now! that final fading stroke seemed to declaim. It begins now! And, as it faded, almost as if its echo had triggered an event in the outside world, Ellis caught sight of himself in a mirror, framed by blue tiles, linking two shops. He saw, before he strode past, the long oval of his face smiling out of a halo of curls. Not bad! he thought, glad that the quickly moving reflection had seemed to belong to someone so much older than seventeen. Yet, almost at once he felt discontented, for he did not want to look quite so wholesome -- quite so new. But now, out of nowhere it seemed, a huge wind came funneling down the street toward him. Abruptly, the air whirled with leaves and trash, some of which danced higher and higher, lifting over the streetlights, zigzagging, twisting, before tumbling away across roofs on the opposite side of the road. One piece of screwed-up red paper spun upward as if it were about to go into orbit. A blackboard, advertising café meals, tumbled toward him like a square wheel, first one corner and then another striking the pavement. Ellis dodged it. The wind punched his face, at the same time stinging him with gritty dust. Angry voices filled his ears, and a gliding figure, apparently lifted by the storm, leaped from the pavement onto a narrow, empty strip designated as a bus stop. The skater swung so dangerously close to the line of slow-moving traffic that one or two drivers tooted their horn in outrage, and a passenger lowered his window to shout angrily, What do you think you're playing at, you bloody fool? But the gliding man simply flung out his left arm, in a gesture both graceful and confident, and extended a single, insulting finger. Another gust of wind tilted advancing pedestrians back on their heels, and the skater, perhaps taking advantage of their uncertainty, jumped from the bus-stop space to the pavement. Suddenly, Ellis and the skater were face-to-face. For the first time that evening Ellis recognized someone, and was sure that he, too, was recognized. The skater's expression changed. Sliding past Ellis, he turned into a shop doorway, spun around, and then darted back again. He seemed to move without any effort at all...a young man in an ancient camel-hair coat, both elbows worn through, one of them blackened as if the wearer had casually leaned among red-hot coals. A name came into Ellis's head. Jackie, wasn't it? Jackie Kettle? No! Not quite! A voice from the past spoke softly in his memory. Funny name, isn't it? It's a strange cow. Jackie Cattle! That was it. Jackie Cattle. Copyright 2000 by Margaret Mahy