The Spirit House is narrated by Julie, a sophomore in high school, who is very judgmental and overly concerned with being popular. She seems selfish, immature, and mean-spirited—if her dismayed anticipation that her family's Thai guest will be a nerdish bookworm who will cause her embarrassment and loss of popularity at school is any indication. Her delight that the teenager who shows up is handsome and worldly, a boy who could inspire envy in her girlfriends and those that she wants to impress, makes her seem to be only a statusseeking airhead. Her narration, under the circumstances, is one that demands that readers try to read between the lines. The selfish Julie may well be overstating the closed-mindedness of her mother, whose disciplining angers her. In the case of Bia, Julie's thoughts are so confused that one must question everything she says about him...