Robin Klein

This book was part of my class's reading time in Grade 2. Two decades on and I still remember how uncomfortable and sad this book made me feel. Shelley is horrible to begin with and she treats Ben appallingly. I remember being torn between understanding and not quite understanding how she could be so mean. This book deals with some very important issues surrounding disabilities and the way we treat ourselves and others. And it's relevant even more so today. The friendship that develops between them is sweet but it is hard won and it really makes you feel for the struggles Ben suffers. I can't say I liked this book, but even as an 8 year old I remember thinking it was important. 4 stars.… (mere)

“It was as though he’d been marooned on a desert island, and someone had come along and rescued him in a little boat. Promised to take him to safety. Only that person proved to know nothing about navigation, had taken him instead into rough wild seas . . . ”

This is a well-written, sensitive, and affecting Australian novel about an unlikely friendship between a timid eleven-year-old boy and a troubled twenty-year-old girl. It’s the summer holidays, and Seymour has been banished to the tiny home of the aging Thelma, a woman his mother knows from church. According to Seymour, his mum delights in self-generated drama and her victim status. Currently she’s concocted a story that Seymour’s drinking, gambling ne’er-do-well father, from whom she’s estranged, wants to abduct her son. Engaged in packing up her flat in preparation for a move and a new job situation, she places Seymour with Thelma for a few weeks. He has been ordered to stay indoors all day in the sizzling heat and upgrade his schoolwork while Thelma is at work. Although he’s a compliant, obedient sort, Seymour is so bored he climbs the back gate and goes out into Victoria Road, a bustling street with many shops. To escape some boys who harass him, he rushes through an open gate into another backyard along the same alleyway that Thelma’s property backs onto. There, the lively—and to Seymour—gorgeous Angie Easterbrook is sunbathing. At the girl’s bidding, Seymour quickly makes himself useful in her filthy little flat: preparing coffee and selecting earrings for her while she showers. And so their friendship begins.

Over the next several days, Seymour is Angie’s constant companion, and the two go on outings: to see the mansion-lined street where Angie eventually plans to live with her boyfriend Jas, to the park, the racetrack, and to a strained lunch meeting with Angie’s mother at the Easterbrook home in the suburbs. Angie talks non-stop to Seymour. She has big plans for a flower shop or perhaps a business that sells handicrafts and gifts. She goes about dressed in gaudy, outlandish outfits, each of which she has a name for—“Susan-Jane” for a pink, girly number, for example, and “Neptunia” for a dress that shimmers with the colours of the sea. Several times Seymour accompanies Angie to a “hospital” where the girl is in a program to receive special medication. It’s for “gastro” issues, she tells him, and the naïve boy, bedazzled by her and thrilled at having any friend at all, takes her at her word. But Angie’s periodic “flu” episodes, her dead-to-the-world sleeps, the disorder and squalor she lives in, her shiftiness, and her obvious estrangement from her parents, younger siblings, and best friend all point the reader to her addiction. It seems likely that what she is receiving in her “program” is methadone. (Author Robin Klein provides Angie’s backstory by sprinkling the narrative with letters from Angie’s family and friends, extracts about plans and debts Angie’s diary, one of the girl’s pitiful job applications—which testifies only to her unreliability as an employee, and other documentary “evidence” of the chaos of the young woman’s life.)

In the end, Seymour’s friendship with Angie represents his coming of age. The bats are “released from the compartments of his mind” assailing “his whole being with their black fluttering” and “all the elaborate pretences he’d so carefully built” are no longer useful. The person Seymour has placed his trust in is not trustworthy and cannot navigate her own life, never mind help him with his. The boy makes a decision to act to help his friend, and the reader follows along with interest to see how it goes.

In spite of the serious subject matter, Klein’s book has many light touches. Her characterization is strong, and the author’s depiction of Angie’s family’s difficulties in coping with the girl are realistically portrayed. While Klein doesn’t provide a “happy” ending exactly, she does end on a note of hopefulness.

Recommended for readers 12 and up, who like character-driven novels.… (mere)

I was trying to think of the author of this book the other day and I saw it in my school's library!

So glad. I've been wanting to review this book. I really liked this book when I read it in high school. I thought it was a pretty important book. It discussed drug use (without explicit examples, only references) in an age-appropriate way. I was a little bit older than I needed to be to read it, so I didn't enjoy it as much, but I thought it was really accessible.

I liked the characters, I liked the narrative voice despite the young age of the narrator. I thought this novel was well-structured and provides kids with an accessible book to read about and discuss drugs, drug use and its effects in a safe, contained environment.

I think this is one of Robin Klein's earlier books, and you can tell that her writing style is not as evolved. I enjoyed this, though, and think it's a solid effort for a novel. 3.5 stars from me. c:… (mere)