The Opposite of Love

By Helen Benedict

Madge is biraccial and her light brown skin has made her feel like an outcast, until she spends a week with her cousin in New York City. There she befriends a small boy with skin the color of her own and no one to care for him. On impulse, Madge takes the boy back home with her. Ultimately, she finds that caring for a child isn?t easy, and neither is finding a middle ground between love and indifference.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670061352
• ISBN13: 9780670061358
• Release Date: September 2007
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.9" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7 and higher

Customer Reviews

Great work from an amazing writer

Helen Benedict is a wonderful writer. Her novel, Bad Angel, vividly and powerfully portrays the lives of her inner city characters. Sailor's Wife richly conveys life in a Greek Isle and elsewhere. In the Opposite of Love she once again proves her power and insight as a novelist. It is a stunning work.

A book for all ages

A book for all ages, this story of 17-year-old Madge is a > heart-breaker and a heart-warmer all at the same time. Madge <br />> lives in a little town in Pennylvania. Her mother is an English <br />ex-con (some may remember her, the unforgettable, loveable and <br />> exasperating Brandy from Benedict's first novel, "A World Like <br />> This"). And her father is - who knows? - some passer-by from <br />Jamaica whom she never saw and her mother barely remembers. <br />> Torn by love and hate towards her mother; bruised by the casual <br />> cruelties and calculated slights that Benedict brilliantly shows <br />> to be part of the life of a teen-age girl; wounded by racial <br />> slurs, Madge finds her own way - not an easy way, but a <br />> triumphant expression of growing into a strong and loving <br />> woman who can put others before her self. And in finding her own <br />> way Madge helps us to understand the terrible sadness behind <br />> those millions of children who are being left behind - and to ask <br />> ourselves what we can do to help. <br />>