The situation gets more complicated as she embarks on a quest to discover just how her grandfather's actions so long ago could have affected the life of her friend the pharmacist, a man her grandfather will not face and who harbors startling secrets of his own.Īll of these revelations are prompted by the arrival in the village of a bird watching boy who discovers Zazoo swimming and clearly finds her entrancing. These answers set Zazoo's world spinning as she struggles to reconcile her grandfather's past with her present love for him. But when she asks her grandfather about those days he decides to set her straight on just what a hero can be during a time of war and how confusing the definitions of good and evil can become. The people of the village refer to him as a hero and Zazoo is certain that he must have done great things against the Germans. He endured several years in what he calls the 'Awful Time', or the Second World War. This is France after all, and the grandfather is over seventy years old. This is familiar young adult territory but when the questions branch into the lives of Zazoo's grandfather and the village pharmacist they take her and the reader into a fresh and unexpectedly dark direction. As Zazoo finds herself questioning the identities of everyone around her, she also must question herself and the truths she has always believed to be her own.

The question of her identity, of whether she is more French than Vietnamese, comes up several times in the course of the book. She has lived in France with her 'Grand-Pierre' ever since. It begins with the title character who was born in Vietnam but adopted as an orphan by a Frenchman at the age of two.

Zazoo does have an interesting plot, particularly for a teen novel. Okay, I'm gushing and that needs to stop. I loved this book, completely and utterly loved it. And while I loved the characters and the amazing ways in which they are transformed by the events within the book I think that more than anything I will return to Zazoo again and again in the future because it is such a great example of good writing. Zazoo transported me it took me to France, to Vietnam, to WWII. I started reading expecting nothing but quickly fell under its spell. It is instead the most old fashioned of concepts, the well-written story. This is not a rapidly drawn plot-driven novel it is not dependent upon sudden revelations or special effects to keep the reader's attention. Several times while I was reading it I was stuck by the elegance of the language, by the gorgeous way in which author Richard Mosher use words so carefully to tell his story. Zazoo is one of the most beautiful novels I have read in a long long time.

Zazoo by richard mosher