Review #13: Mockingbird, by Kathryn Erskine

I downloaded Mockingbird from the library the other day, not really realizing that it was a YA book - actually it's a middle grade book - until I was in to it, and by then, I was in to it, and couldn't put it down. In fact, I finished it within a couple of days, even sneaking in a few minutes here and there at work. It grabbed me from the first page and didn't let go.

It also broke my heart.

Ten year old Caitlin is in the fifth grade. Her mother died when she was young, and her older brother Devon, who was her guide to the world, was killed in a school shooting last year, so now she only has her father, a widower who is having trouble seeing through his own veil of grief. Caitlin also has Asperger's, and over the course of the novel, we hear Caitlin's own voice explaining how she and her father are coping with moving forward and moving on. 

But moving forward from Devon's death isn't the only challenge in Caitlin's life. She still needs to navigate recess and lunchtime and school and group projects. She has a very patient school counselor in the form of Mrs. Brook, who is helping her to adjust to life without Devon as well as prepare for the future. And in an interesting twist, Caitlin befriends a first grader named Michael who is the son of a teacher who was killed in the same shooting as Devon. 

With Caitlin as the narrator, the reader is plunged headfirst in to her world, and for the first time, I felt like I maybe understood a tiny bit what it must be like to go through life, not just as a scared and confused kid, but as a scared and confused kid who also doesn't have all the "normal" tools available to her. From the outside, some of Caitlin's reactions and statements may look and sound bizarre, but from her perspective, they all made total and complete sense. And that's what elevates this book for me: Erskine so deftly pulls the reader in to Caitlin's world that she isn't "weird" or "different". What she is is a kid who is trying to cope, in a very honest way, with all the things that life is throwing at her. And isn't that what we're all trying to do, too?

It would be easy to lump this book in with the latest crop of Asperger's books. It seems like they're popping up all over the place, but this is more than just another "aspie book".  Some of the criticisms I read indicated that maybe there was too much going on, and there definitely is a lot happening: Asperger's, being "on the spectrum", school shootings, bullying, parental death, sibling death, coming of age, and it's also got some lovely homages to Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. But kids today do have a lot going on - we have only to turn on the news or look online to see that - so why shouldn't their books reflect that?

I don't think I'm going to like it at all. I think it's going to hurt. But after the hurt I think maybe something good and strong and beautiful will come out of it.

Review #6: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon

I spied The Curious Incident on the sale shelf at my local library's bookshop (aren't those the best inventions?) and picked it up, not for me, but for a friend. (The same one who gave me The Brothers K and Shantaram. He's also just given me The Beach, which is, in his words, "trippy". In other words, he reads decent literature.) Without knowing anything about it, I proudly delivered my find, and a week later he called to tell me he'd finished, it was overwhelmingly sad, and that I needed to read it right now so we could talk about it.

So I dropped what I was reading and picked up the story of fifteen year old Christopher, an English boy with autism who discovers the neighbor's dog murdered in the garden next door, pierced straight through with a gardening fork. Falsely accused of the killing, Christopher sets out to prove his innocence and solve the murder, and along the way he discovers some painful and shocking truths about his family.

Listening to Christopher narrate his story is fascinating and heartbreaking all at the same time. Without giving anything away, Christopher discovers some things that children should never have to know, and listening to him process and analyze it is achingly painful. You can almost feel him retreating in to himself, and it's a testament to Haddon's excellent writing that you can hear the subtle flatness in his voice as he tells those sections of the story. There's a scene where he's on the train to London, hiding from the police on a luggage rack behind a curtain, tucked up in to a little ball on the middle shelf, next to suitcases and overnight bags, trying to feel safe. He's describing what's happening and what his mind is telling him, and I wanted so badly to crawl in there with him and hold him, except that Christopher doesn't like to be touched, so that would have only distressed him further. I felt utterly helpless in that moment (and not a little ridiculous; Christopher is, after all, a fictional character).

Without question, the feeling I had when I finished this book was sadness. Not the kind of sadness one feels when Beth dies in Little Women, but just...sadness. Simple, uncomplicated, sadness. Christopher's situation isn't going to change. His feelings aren't going to change. He's forever lost to the people in his life. The adults in this book make some mind-bogglingly horrific decisions, but at the same time, as my friend said, one can almost understand those decisions, and I'm not sure how they could have done things differently.

This could have easily become "the book with the autistic boy" and Christopher could have easily become a caricature, but Haddon handles the story beautifully, and his prose is spare and delicate. The Curious Incident has been around for a while now, and if, like me, you've just never gotten around to it, get around to it soon.