Candy Wood's Reviews > Ruby Red

I wonder if this book made the Carnegie shortlist in 2008 because of its topic: the narrator, Ruby, is 17 in 1976, just before the Soweto riots. The reviewer in Books for Keeps called it racist, but all the characters are stereotypes, white or black (the shallow best friend who dumps Ruby when she rejects the spoiled rich kid, the flamboyantly gay gallery assistant, the Afrikaans rugby captain with a quiet, shy sister, and the angry young black artist who loves her, for example). The writing seems overdescriptive, even for a teen narrator, and the plot follows a YA trajectory, with no return home possible in the end.