Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

To be fair, I’ve never loved plots that involve a character who has something she needs to say and yet can’t manage to just spit it out already; that said, both the mother AND the daughter drove me crazy for the middle of McCall Hoyle’s The Thing with Feathers. (Maybe it’s divided into sixths, and parts 3/6-5/6 made me nuts?) The beginning is poignant but promising, involving homeschooled, epileptic Emilie facing public school under orders from her therapist. (I know it’s better to say “person with epilepsy,” and I do actually understand why, but I couldn’t resist the siren song of parallelism.) She’d much rather not, but her epilepsy and her dad’s death have made her more of a hermit than her mother can allow, and so into the breach she goes.

Luckily for Emilie (not my favorite spelling of that name, btw), she’s drawn in despite her resistance, and is paired for an English project with the unrealistically incredible Chatham, who also (of course) needs tutoring to keep his place on the basketball team. (He’s gorgeous, kind, athletic, a continual volunteer–sure, he’s got some life reasons to be that kind, but still…) She develops friendships with some of the ‘lit-mag’ people as well, and things seem to be looking up–or WOULD be, except that of course she doesn’t want anyone to know about her epilepsy. Add Emilie’s unwillingness to communicate to her mother’s spectacular failures in that department, and you’ve got a parent failing to tell her child a few (mostly one) exceptionally important things while that child avoids being her real self to everyone she’s meeting. (I also want to complain about her self-absorbed wallowing and ludicrous assumptions about everyone around her in comparison to herself, except that I have some unpleasant memories of being like that once upon a time. And I didn’t have epilepsy or a dead dad to serve as an extenuating circumstance.) I was gearing up for a fairly negative review when Emilie finally had her epiphany. Thankfully, the ending fixed (exceedingly quickly, I might add) most of what was annoying me, and while the best parts happen awfully fast, it’s a positive read in the end.

Especially for teenagers, who just happen to be its intended audience.

Anyway. Today’s a ‘catch up at home’ sort of day, and so I’d better get back to it. If you need a clean read for your teen with a significant romantic element and some deeper things. give The Thing with Feathers* a try!

*Point to ponder–there are a surprising number of contemporary novels that feature Emily Dickinson’s poetry as part of the plot, and I’m torn between acknowledging the incredibleness of some of her lines and hating on her dashes…which may be ironic, as I’m no stranger to the double dash, but Dickinson’s dashes make me shudder.