Critical Overview

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After ten years of struggle, waking up at four or five in the morning to write before heading to her day job, Jennifer Donnelly finally found success in 2001. Three books, each targeting entirely different audiences, were accepted for publication within months of each other. The first was a picture book for young children entitled Humble Pie. Soon after, Donnelly's historical romance novel Tea Rose, which had been making the rounds for years, sold as well. If that were not accomplishment enough for a writer accustomed to rejections, her third success was most decidedly the charm. After reading only thirty pages and an outline at an auction, Harcourt Brace outbid three other presses for A Northern Light. Editors at Harcourt compared the book to beloved novels Drowning Ruth and Little Women.

Early reviews of the novel were unanimously enthusiastic. Courtney Williamson of the Christian Science Monitor deemed the novel the "quintessential coming of age story … unflinching in its portrayal of loss, poverty, racism, and pregnancy." Sandy MacDonald of the New York Times emphasized the "distinctive characters who ring rich and true," as well as the author's capacity to ground the story "in often horrific realities of rural life a century ago." Others extol the originality of voice, the multi-layered narrative structure, and the novel's transcendence of genre. Virtually all reviewers found the first person narrator, Mattie, the most appealing factor of all. Mattie strives to see clearly and act well, Dierdre Baker of the Toronto Star pointed out, citing also her earthly vigor, honesty, and humor as qualities that endear her to readers (quoted on Jennifer Donnelly's website). We share her desires, if not her unique challenges, on every page, writes Williamson.

British audiences were as enthralled as their American counterparts with the novel. Within weeks of the initial sale to Harcourt Brace, Donnelly's agent took the novel's outline to London, where it was purchased by Bloomsbury Press and published under the title A Gathering Light. According to the Review page of Jennifer Donnelly's website, the Times (London) regarded the book as one of the year's best young adult novels. Bloomsbury Magazine notes that Dinah Hall of the Sunday Telegraph credited Donnelly with capturing period and place with almost supernatural skill.

By the fall of 2003, the novel was shortlisted for nearly every book award in the young adult category. It won Best Book of the Year from the School Library Journal and Publisher's Weekly annual selections. Booklist, Book Sense, the Junior Library, and countless other judges of young adult fiction included it among their annual ten best. The fervor had not waned in 2004, when the novel was honored with a Michael J. Prinz award, Borders Original Voices Award, and the L.A. Times Book Prize. Finally, it was awarded the 2003 Carnegie Medal, the most prestigious British award for children's literature.

Beil notes in her interview with Donnelly that, though the author claims to have written A Northern Light for girls Mattie's age to empower them to make their own choices, the novel has been considered a crossover success, appealing to adults as well as to the audience for which it was intended. Rights to the novel have been sold in Croatia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Serbia.

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