Bonnie Pipkin believes in prose, performances, puppet shows, and public displays of affection. Originally from California, Bonnie now lives in Brooklyn. She has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, teaches literature courses at Kean University, officiates weddings, and looks after a very cute cat. Aftercare Instructions is Bonnie’s first novel.
Aftercare Instructions
Audio CD
(Unabridged)
- ISBN-13: 9781427286529
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publication date: 06/27/2017
- Edition description: Unabridged
- Product dimensions: 5.80(w) x 5.10(h) x 0.70(d)
- Age Range: 12 - 17 Years
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This program is read by the author
"As narrator, Bonnie Pipkin's flat affect and deliberate pacing are wholly appropriate to Gen's struggles with loss and her search for stability and love...Pipkin's sincere connection to the story brings additional depth to her reading of this journey from despair to hope." AudioFile Magazine
Everyone is raving about Aftercare Instructions, Bonnie Pipkin’s electric, format-crushing debut about furious friendship, crazy love, and unexpected hope:
“Important, fierce. Pipkin stole my heart with this book.” A.S. King, author of Still Life with Tornado
“Mighty, innovative, and nearly impossible to put down.” David Arnold, author of Kids of Appetite
“An illuminating, beautiful portrait.” Kathleen Glasgow, author of Girl in Pieces
“A riveting novel as powerful as it is essential.” Robin Wasserman, author of Girls on Fire
“Troubled.” That’s seventeen-year-old Genesis according to her small New Jersey town. She finds refuge and stability in her relationship with her boyfriend, Peteruntil he abandons her at a Planned Parenthood clinic during their appointment to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. The betrayal causes Gen to question everything.
As Gen pushes herself forward to find her new identity without Peter, she must also confront her most painful memories. Through the lens of an ongoing four act play within the novel, the fantasy of their undying love unravels line by line, scene by scene. Digging deeper into her past while exploring the underground theater world of New York City, she rediscovers a long forgotten dream. But it’s when Gen lets go of her history, the one she thinks she knows, that she’s finally able to embrace the complicated, chaotic true story of her life, and take center stage.
Aftercare Instructions, a debut audiobook full of heart and hope, follows Gen on a big-hearted journey from dorm rooms to diners to underground theatersand ultimately, right into listeners' hearts.
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As Pipkin’s sensitive and big-hearted debut opens, 17-year-old Genesis Johnson has been abandoned at Planned Parenthood by her boyfriend, Peter, while she’s getting an abortion. After, Genesis veers from place to place and friend to friend seeking solace, grieving, despairing, and raging at Peter, who seems to have disappeared at the most vulnerable moment of her life. Pipkin’s chapters are framed by postabortion instructions (“Talk to Someone If You Experience Feelings of Detachment”), and screenplay-style scenes, interspersed throughout, recount how Genesis and Peter fell in love. These dueling formats powerfully underscore what feels like an unbridgeable divide between then and now for Genesis, while amplifying the role theater plays in her life: downtown New York City shows were a point of connection between her and her late father, and she auditions for a role at the urging of a boy she hooks up with during an anger-fueled bender. Genesis’s conflicted relationships with her mother, grandparents, and friends are as engrossing as her breakup with Peter, and her story packs a big emotional punch. Ages 12–up. Agent: Emily van Beek, Folio Literary Management. (June)
A Bustle American Woman Book Club Pick
A PopSugar Best Book of the Summer
A Refinery29 Best Read of June
An Amazon Best YA Book of the Summer
An iBooks Best Book of the Month
“We can’t overstate how much we LOVED this debut.” iBooks, Best Book of the Month
“This sharp, complex narrative is a coming-of-age novel that will feel especially resonant for women in the lens of 2017.”
Refinery29
“Sensitive, big hearted, engrossing...packs a big emotional punch.”
Publishers Weekly
“An incredibly honest and empathetic debut.”
ALA Booklist
“A new voice in contemporary fiction introduces a cast of characters and a story line that will stick with readers long after they are done. Purchase where contemporary YA fiction authors like Rainbow Rowell and John Green are popular.”
SLJ
“Important subject matter, fierce writing. Pipkin stole my heart with this book.”
A.S. King, Printz Honor-winning author of Still Life with Tornado
“With Aftercare Instructions, Bonnie Pipkin offers a mighty, innovative, and (often painfully) real debut. Its constructionthe present day in prose, the backstory in screenplayamps up the ticking clock, making it nearly impossible to put down. Readers may experience joy, heartache, and everything in between.”
David Arnold, New York Times bestselling author of Kids of Appetite and Mosquitoland
“Aftercare Instructions is an illuminating, beautiful portrait of a brave and troubled girl with a brave, brave heart. Moving, authentic, timely.”
Kathleen Glasgow, New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces
“A raw, riveting story of love and family and the strength to stay standing when both begin to crumble. Bonnie Pipkin never flinches, and the result is a novel as powerful as it is essential.”
Robin Wasserman, critically acclaimed author of Girls on Fire
“Bonnie Pipkin presents more than a novel, but a confident and exciting writing career.”
New York Times bestselling and three-time Coretta Scott King Award-winning author Rita Williams-Garcia
“With quiet, subtle power, Bonnie Pipkin does not shy away from portraying the harsh realities of what can happen in the aftermath of a hard decision. Aftercare Instructions is a heart wrenching story that will touch and resonate with so many young adult readers.”
Printz Award winner and National Book Award Finalist An Na
“Do I have any criticisms? None.”
Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner Tim Wynne-Jones
Gr 10 Up—A new voice in contemporary fiction introduces a cast of characters and a story line that will stick with readers long after they are done. Genesis struggles to put her life together when everything falls apart. She is adrift after her father dies tragically, but Gen thinks she has found someone to hold her broken pieces together once she meets Peter. After a year and a half of a seemingly harmonious relationship, the religious Peter vanishes while at Planned Parenthood, where the couple is terminating an unintended pregnancy. Following his departure, the protagonist must rely on her best friend, Rose, cousin Delilah, and baggage-heavy mother to see her through. While finding her way, the teen deals with issues from her past that she has kept buried deep. Readers will discover the story of Gen's past in the form of a script as she comes to terms with Peter's abandonment. Scenes involving theater in New York City are peppered throughout and add a refreshing twist to the setting. This novel will appeal to teens that are struggling to find themselves after a loss. This debut novel touches upon many heavy issues, including drug use, abortion, and suicide. A compelling and relatable novel with realistic characters and situations. VERDICT Purchase where contemporary YA fiction authors like Rainbow Rowell and John Green are popular.—Tegan Anclade, Lake Villa District Library, IL
Pipkin's debut leads readers on a journey through grief to hope again.Genesis is a high school senior on the cusp of her 18th birthday in the New Jersey suburbs of New York City. At the open readers find her in the immediate aftermath of an abortion, left alone in Manhattan by her boyfriend, Peter. Classmate Rose and cousin Delilah form the primary emotional support system for Genesis as she grapples with the compounding losses in her life. First, her father's death, then her inconsolable mother, lost to grief, once-close friendships, and finally the baby and the first love who helped make it. Nevertheless, Peter's abandonment becomes a fulcrum on which Genesis' life turns, compelling her to identify her own values and dreams. Despite several trips, falls, and unwise decisions on the way, the payoff is ultimately hopeful. Chapters of first-person stream-of-consciousness narrative are interspersed with short scenes written as a play that flash back to the events leading up to that moment alone in a clinic in the city. At times this narrative style begins to feel narcissistic, as other characters' motivations are not revealed until the final moments. Ethnic identities of the characters are never explicit, and it would be easy to picture them with any number of combinations, though the overall impression is of predominant whiteness. Although Gen may be hard for readers to connect to, her story is interesting enough they may well stick with her anyway. (Fiction. 14-18)