Fade Out

This novel, written in the voice of a fourteen-year-old young woman, has one of the most interesting first-person voices I have ever read as she struggles with the problems faced by many adolescents--divorce, a deeply unhappy mother, the narrator's crush on her old baby-sitter's boy friend, and a fascination with the noir films shown in the theater where that young man works. The book captures a world filled with angst, lies, and her own confusions. A very fine novel--and great fun to read because none of the problems is extreme, unlike the world of the other Suma novel I have read, "The walls Around Us."

I was looking up Nova Ren Suma's newest book when I noticed this and thought, "Hm, how did I miss this one?"Oh, but I didn't. This used to be called "Dani Noir." And it used to have one of the coolest covers, ever.What happened, publishing gods? This doesn't reflect the story at all. Sigh.That aside, this is an awesome Middle Grade read. Nova Ren Suma has /voice/. Love the writing, and Dani is just an awesome character.(So glad I own the old version, though.)

It's a very light read, the characters are fun and the narrator is witty, flawed and enjoyable. The book is completely plotless, though, at least to my plot standards. It's uncommitted fun and it's nice while it lasts but I wouldn't recommend it, not really. As likable as Dani Noir may be, it ends up just being a funny and amusing book in which nothing happens, and if you already have cable, you can find funny and amusing there.

Actual Rating: 3.5 out of 5, but rounding upThis was a surprising book. I'd expected it to be in the vein of Nova Ren Suma's other novels, which are psychological YA thrillers blended with magical / paranormal realism. But FADE OUT, which was previously released for Middle Grade readers as DANI NOIR, is a straightforward YA mystery, with shades of the quirkiness and dark edges that are synonymous with Suma's current style. The central plot revolves around 13-year-old Dani playing detective when she realizes her babysitter's boyfriend Jackson (who Dani herself may or may not have a crush on) might be cheating. But the story also draws on Dani's parents' divorce, her father's impending second marriage to his mistress, and her shaky friendships with other children in her small upstate New York hometown.To me, FADE OUT's main weakness is that the lack of cohesion between the various plot threads. I guess you could tie Dani's anger at Jackson to her lingering distress over her father leaving the family...? In any case, it's difficult to understand Dani's motivations sometimes - and when those reasons are finally revealed, some required a leap in logic in order to be believable.So what kept me reading? Dani's fantastic narrative voice. Inquisitive, imaginative, sassy, skeptical, and sarcastic, she's a wickedly fun character to follow and daydream with. Her obsession with film noir also plays a big role, and not just in the plot. We might not be familiar with the films that Dani describes, but we get a deep enough sense of their darkness, melodrama, and moral ambiguity to see how they've influenced Dani and remind us how, strangely enough, real life can sometimes echo the movies. After all, life imitates art, right? Or is it the other way around? ;)So, yes, FADE OUT was a quick, entertaining read. But if you're new to Nova Ren Suma's work, I'd recommend starting with 17 & GONE or THE WALLS AROUND US instead, since they're both stronger stories than this one.

This is the complete review as it appears <a href="http://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2014/12/dani-noir-by-nova-ren-suma.html">at my blog dedicated to reading, writing (no 'rithmatic!), movies, & TV</a>. Blog reviews often contain links which are not reproduced here, nor will updates or modifications to the blog review be replicated here. Graphic and children's reviews on the blog typically feature two or three images from the book's interior, which are not reproduced here.Note that I don't really do stars. To me a book is either worth reading or it isn't. I can't rate it three-fifths worth reading! The only reason I've relented and started putting stars up there is to credit the good ones, which were being unfairly uncredited. So, all you'll ever see from me is a five-star or a one-star (since no stars isn't a rating, unfortunately).I rated this book WARTY!WARNING! MAY CONTAIN UNHIDDEN SPOILERS! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!t's December 4th already! How time flies - especially if the you throw the magazine out of a window several storeys up.... So, it must be time to post a review of a novel beginning with the letter 'D', and today it's Dani Noir. Is that a cool title or what? The problem is that the novel wasn't anywhere near as cool as its title!Also how cool is this author's name? It's like something out of science fiction (like from Greg Bear's Eon quadrilogy). This novel was original published as Dani Noir, which is a unique title, but then the title was changed - I guess because it wasn't selling - to Fade Out which means instead of being unique, it now became lost in a dozen novels with the same title. No one screws up a writer's work like Big Publishing™!The problem is that this novel is already forgettable, even with a unique title. The main character is middle-grader Dani Callanzano. She is (or rather, was) referred to as Dani Noir in the title because of her absurd and highly-unlikely obsession with film noir - namely old and tedious B&W movies made in the thirties and forties.Dani is a slacker, a freeloader, and a stalker - she never pays to see the movies, she bums free ice-cream from a friend who works in a store, and she starts stalking her supposed friend Jackson to find out what his involvement is with this girl Bella, when Jackson, who is older than Dani, is supposed to be dating Elissa. Dani is the dumbest 13-year-old on the planet since it never once occurs to her that Jackson is double-dating. Jackson is a lowlife who has at least one inappropriately violent spasm.Dani's also dealing with the fact that her dad ran-off with another woman leaving his wife (Dani's mom) not dealing with it at all. Any kid with half-an-ounce of smarts would have put two-and-two together and drawn a parallel between her dad's behavior and Jackson's, as the author ham-fistedly did, but Dani can't even find the two's, let alone match them up.Some reviewers have labeled her as selfish and self-centered, but she's no more so than any kid her age. Aside from that issue, this story didn't work very well. It's well-written in parts, and amusingly written in others, but it's hard to imagine many kids of that age group being interested in this story. It's much more of a young adult story, but of course then, the plot wouldn't have been credible. It was hardly credible as it is.The characters are interesting, but almost as clumsily-drawn as is the aforementioned parallel. The film noir angle is larded all over this story and simply became annoying after a very short time. It's an amateur mistake to take a passion of your own (which I'm guessing this is - a passion of the author's) and jam it into a novel instead of sculpting the novel and the passion together to create a really well-working story.It's highly unlikely that a movie theater like the "Little Art" (which appears to show nothing but 35mm prints of 30's and 40's movies) could possibly survive. Yes, the theater employs child labor so it's cheap to run in that regard, but there's really never anyone in the theater apart from Dani, and she never pays! I don't see how the theater survived even with the low overhead from cheap movies.Dani isn't credible as a twelve-to-thirteen year old either. She's far too reserved - she never blabs anything to anyone, not even a friend with whom she used to hang out. She's secretive and manipulative and very selfish and not really a very pleasant person. Austin, the male interest in Dani's life, is so obvious as to be painful. I can't in good faith recommend this novel.

So I came to FADE OUT having already read THE WALLS AROUND US by the same author, which is one of my all-time favourite YA titles. FADE OUT is MG, not YA, and I was intrigued to see how an author that I know for her YA has tackled a story for a younger readership.Right off the bat, it was clear the same author had written this book--that was my first observation. The writing is just beautiful. It's haunting and deep and the imagery is just so powerful. Equally, the characterisation is amazing. Dani feels real and solid. She's snarky and yeah, she just feels so realistic. So this was a great start.Dani is obsessed with noir film, and she tackles her parents' divorce through this lens, constantly comparing her life to that of the protagonists in these films. And then when she discovers that her babysitter-and-best-friend's boyfriend Jackson is cheating on, we see all this through the noir lens. Dani strives to identify the 'femme fatale'--the other woman. And we see her doing a lot of detective work.I really enjoyed this book, but I'll admit, the stakes in it just weren't high enough for me. And that's entirely a personal preference, as I just prefer stakes to be life-and-death if possible, and I know that's harder in a MG. I just wanted more of a sense of danger, something ominous. But that's not Dani's story, and that's fine.

excellent product would defo recommend to friends thank you everything about this product is more than i expected very pleased with the outcome and fits well with my collection of the other books i have in the series