Little Big Love

Finished July 7

Little Big Love by Katy Regan

This novel is told in three voices: Zac Hutchinson, who is ten years old; his mother Juliet; and his grandfather Mick. A few months before Zac is turning eleven, he witnesses his mom at the end of a disappointing date, the first date she's had in a long time. That night, she makes a surprising confession to him, one that she doesn't remember making the next day, but that impels him on a mission that he was already thinking of. That mission is to locate his father, Liam Jones. Liam was supposedly the love of Juliet's life, but has not tried to stay in touch with her or be part of Zac's life. 

Zac's grandmother talks about what a bad person he was, really demonizing him, and his grandfather seems to agree. Zac spends a couple of days a week at his grandparents after school, bonding with his grandmother through baking and with his grandfather with nature documentaries. 

When Zac was just a few weeks old, his uncle Jamie died in an accident, but the whole truth of that night has yet to emerge for everyone. Zac himself has been told one story, and he has been focused on his similarities to his uncle, such as their common interest in cooking creatively. 

Zac's best friend Teagan is his co-conspirator in his mission and she has her own issues, living in a damp apartment, struggling with asthma, and missing her own dad who has remarried and seems to want little to do with her anymore. 

Zac is also struggling with being bullied due to his weight. And soon after Juliet's disastrous date, Juliet has her eyes opened to this struggle.

The two kids are great characters, smart and creative, and they really do their best to follow up every clue in their search for Liam. Juliet is a good mom, who is struggling herself with the loss of Liam, the responsibility of raising a child on her own, and her own self esteem issues. But she takes Zac's situation seriously and works to make healthier decisions going forward. 

Mick is a recovering alcoholic, who started his journey to sobriety a few months before Zac was born, and has always felt inferior to his wife. He struggles with the choices he has made, and it is only toward the end of the book that we see how his self esteem and feelings of precariousness in his relationships made the situation what it is now. 

This is a book that is both uplifting and heartbreaking, but ultimately a human story. 

Fat Girl

Finished January 15
Fat Girl by Judith Moore

This memoir is not a happy one. As this author says, it is her story and her family's story. It is about the food they ate. It is about their unhappiness. As she says, "This is a story about an unhappy fat girl who became a fat woman who was happy and unhappy." She found her story difficult to tell, and at times it made her ill to write about it, but it also gave her relief to get the experiences out. She doesn't want people to feel sorry for her, as she doesn't feel sorry for herself. But I have to say that at times I felt sorry for the child she was. Children have less control over their experiences than adults, and her child self tried certain strategies, but always seemed an observer of her own life, wishing and dreaming of different lives but never able to understand what she could do to get there.
She says that while her childhood lacked love for the most part (her uncle seems to have provided the only consistent positive adult presence in her life, with his many friends, pet names for her, and general kindness. She did have the occasional other adult or child in her life who was kind, a neighbour who took an interest or the girl Glenda in her hometown who made sure she had people to sit with at lunch and got introduced to others. But she seems to be unable to know what to do with this kindness and it doesn't seem to have made a difference in her situation.
She calls herself a solitary and I think she is right. She seems the type of person who doesn't make connections either through her own actions or taking advantage of others' actions toward her. I think it is that that makes me feel sorry, sorry for a life without true connection to others.