Tag: child narrator

Book Review: A Million Things by Emily Spurr – a resilient young heroine struggling with loss

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I was drawn to this book by its compelling storyline – a young girl all alone, trying to pretend nothing is wrong after her mother disappears. Well, that’s how it seemed to start with. The book’s told from the point of view of ten-year-old Rae – but it’s not your standard first-person narrative voice. Often Rae is talking to a ‘you’ – the mother who isn’t there.

It would be easy to assume that the mother is missing because she hasn’t come home. But Rae’s mother has been mentally ill for quite some time. No wonder Rae knows about the routine of managing meals and getting herself to school, of walking Splinter, the dog. Rae has had to be the grown-up a lot of the time. Only this time Rae’s mother has ended her life in the backyard shed. With no one else to turn to, Rae must manage as best she can on her own.

Rae decides to keep going on her own. She becomes adept at keeping up appearances. She gets herself off to school, takes care of the house, and feeds the dog. There’s no time for grief. If only that nosy old lady next door wasn’t always on her front verandah watching. But Lettie has secrets of her own, things she doesn’t want anybody knowing about. It’s only when Rae hears her calling for help one day that the two discover that they need each other.

Each time you’d go, noises muffled and sharpened and silence got loud. I’d stand still, trying not to breathe, waiting for the door to open and for you to come back through it. The silence you left after you grabbed the keys from the bowl on the table and slammed out the door would stand like a person beside me. The bang made me jump every time. Even though I knew it was coming. Knew from the second your eyes lost focus and tightened and you stopped seeing me and saw only this thing ruining your life.

Things become more complicated by the arrival of new people along the street, Oscar who is the same age as Rae, just wants to make friends, but when he parrots critical comments of his mother about Lettie, Rae finds herself sticking up for her neighbour. She doesn’t want social services nosing around.

It is heartbreaking the lengths Rae will go to pretend everything is normal, alleviated in some part by her growing friendship with Lettie. We slowly get pieces of Lettie’s story, her family tragedy. The tension builds as all the plates Rae tries to keep spinning descend one by one and a dramatic event brings help from an unexpected quarter.

This is one of those books that has you holding your breath – you are so much in Rae’s impossible world. The friendly banter between Rae and Lettie lightens things a little, but the old woman’s situation is horrendous as well. You feel how easy it is for life to get on top of you and the book becomes a sensitive portrait of the effects of mental illness, but of resilience as well. The reluctance to let someone else into your life when you need help; of not wanting anything to change. Of holding onto the grief that ensnares you, that keeps the missing loved one there as a constant presence.

A Million Things was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Prize and won the BookBrowse Best Debut Novel 2021. Emily Spurr is certainly a writer to watch. A Million Things gets four stars from me.

Book Review: The Homes by J B Mylet – a gripping Scottish orphanage mystery

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

At the back of the book, J B Mylet explains how he was inspired to write this novel by his mother’s own experiences as a child in an institution very like the one in The Homes. As a young girl she thought all children were brought up in similar set-ups: a cluster of houses in a purpose-built of village with twenty or thirty children per cottage with ‘house parents’ and a cook to feed them all. She didn’t realise that most children grew up with their biological families.

And at first it’s the same for Lesley, sharing a room with five other girls, including her best friend, Jonesy, all about the same age. But now she’s twelve, she knows better. She at least gets regular visits from her grandmother, who though kindly, is unable to care for Lesley, and neither can her mother who visits a few times a year. Lesley is bitter about her mother and finds it difficult to believe her when her mother says she’s hoping to bring her home to live with her one day. Jonesy is there is because the state has considered her mother an unsuitable parent.

There are other rooms in Lesley’s house with more girls of different ages and in charge are the Patersons, a childless couple who do their best. But Mr Paterson is not above taking his belt to the girls, in fact it’s expected. Jonesy gets it more than most. She’s just so lively and unstoppable. And everyone is terrified of the Superintendent, Mr Gordon. Jonesy’s non-stop chatter is a foil to Lesley’s quieter intelligence. Meanwhile Lesley escapes into her studies, one of the few children who bus to a local school.

Fears of punishments and schoolyard bullies all fade into the background when an older girl, Jane Denton, goes missing, her murdered body found some days later. When another girl disappears, Jonesy determines to find out who the murderer is, while Lesley acts as a sounding board and is dragged into Jonesy’s sleuthing, throwing the girls into danger. What follows is a fairly classic mystery with plenty of secrets and hidden motives.

And while this is entertaining, it is the characters of the girls, especially Lesley’s narrative voice, sensitive and smart but also easily led down blind alleys, that make the story interesting. That and the strikingly original setting. It’s difficult to forget that these are vulnerable children who deserve so much better. Fortunately not all the adults are unsympathetic. Eadie is the kindly therapist who listens and offers advice; there’s a friendly detective and Lesley gets help just in the nick of time from an unexpected quarter.

The Homes makes for a compelling story, part mystery, part social commentary, that will have you riveted until the last page. But the story behind the story is just as interesting. I wonder what Mylet will come up with next. This book gets a four out of five from me.