This is Not a Blog about Parenting and its Problems

The books I've chose today all have being a parent as a focal point to the story, but they're certainly not self-help books about parenting.  This first one has as its major plot-line the relationship between a father and his daughter, but it also has much more:

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

How many times do pet-lovers say, "If my dog could talk ..." or some such?  Well, the dog (Enzo) that narrates this story can't talk - c'mon, dog vocal chords simply aren't constructed in the manner that will allow speech - but he can think.  After all, he's watched hours and hours of documentaries on the television, and he's been Denny's confidante ever since Denny brought him home from the farm, and he knows that he's going to reincarnate as a human after he dies.  He's also aware that no matter how he might work at being as close to human as he can, he still has a dog body and dog instincts and sometimes he just has to be a dog.

I've never been at all interested in racing but I really enjoyed Enzo's comments on Denny's driving and his racing career, and it has actually given me an appreciation of the sport that I didn't have before.  To me, though of course I know it must be skilled, it's just been something where men hold as tight as they can to the wheel and drive as fast as they can till the race is over.  Yeah, I know - of course it's not as simple as that, and I'm not really quite that dumb as to imagine that's all there is to it, but I've never been interested enough to have anything other than disparaging thoughts in the past.

Within the framework of racing, however, is a lovely story that encompasses the reciprocal love between human and dog, a very sad love story, the devotion of a father to his child, and a tale of integrity and fortitude in the face of the nasty machinations of people who should know better.  At times a real tear-jerker, this book pulled at my heart-strings like none other I've read in a long time.  Beautiful!

This next one could be advertised as a book about how not to be good parent.  The skill of the writer makes it a book worth reading, but it's not one you could ever say was a pleasure to read:

Crimes Of Neglect by Stephanie Johnson

I've read in the newspapers about some dreadful cases of parents who neglect their children; I've seen snotty-nosed kids walking to school with no handkerchief and no raincoats; I've seen young things hanging around on street corners or wandering along in the night.  And I've wondered what's wrong with the parents!  But then, the worse thing about my childhood was that I happened to be introverted, and was flanked by two extroverted sisters.  'Sheltered', I think you'd have to say about my upbringing.

'Sheltered' couldn't be further from the truth about the narrator of this story.  We don't learn much about Bea's childhood, but it's rather summed up in the comment her then-future husband makes:

'Weird they must've been, your father and mother, to have daughters like you and Lou.'

At that time, Lou was an artist, cultivating eccentricity, and Bea was tall, large, red-headed, and, in her own words, ugly.  There were also the sisters Cushla (the oldest), Helen (the youngest), and Ghita, who stopped speaking when she was three.  We meet the sisters when Bea returns to New Zealand after their father dies, and they are integral to the story, but it's Bea and her children, and their extremely non-sheltered life, that draw the reader into a state of really wanting to know what's going to happen next.  This is despite the many very unpleasant things that occur, and despite Bea being so far (in my experience, at least) from the sort of person I would choose to know.

They do say that truth is stranger than fiction, so I have no doubt that any of these things could (and do) happen.  This first novel by Stephanie Johnson (and I've read 2 others by her already) has confirmed that I don't have to like any of the characters in order to enjoy a book, and I want to continue reading more of her work.

This next book won the Michael L. Printz Award in 2005.  I'm reading through the winners at the moment, and I'm pretty sure I'll want to read through all the nominees some time in the future:


The First Part Last by Angela Johnson

This little book is the story of a 16-year-old father raising his daughter pretty much on his own.  The chapters alternate between the present - where we see his overwhelming love for the baby, coupled with his exhaustion as he tries to continue school while being the sole caregiver outside of school hours, and the past - where he tells of Mia's pregnancy, how their parents took it, and his close friendship with his two buddies, J.L. and K-Boy.  It's a lovely exploration of what it is to be in love, and to be a friend, a father, and a son.

To me, the voice sounded truly authentic, and it tugged at my heartstrings.  Beautiful.

As I say in my review, graphic novels are not a genre I really like, but this does have an excellent message about parenting autistic children: 


With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child by Keiko Tobe

I read about this somewhere and whoever was writing about it was heaping on the praise.  As I'm quite interested in autism I went to my library website and reserved a copy.  I didn't realize at that stage that this is a graphic novel (well - manga, to be precise, which is a serialised story in graphic form that later, if it's highly popular, may be published in book form - at least, that's my understanding of it).  When I was looking at my reserve list some time afterwards, I discovered the truth.

If a manga artist were drawing my reading-life story, I would have been pictured right then with my eyes looking round and child-like, my features all pert and half-Japanese/half-European, and my mouth wide open in shock.  The next picture would have had my mouth in a thin line and my brows furrowed in anger.  Manga don't do subtleties.  And that's probably why I don't really like them.

So, the story's a nice one.  Child is born, all is happy for a few months, then they realise the child doesn't act like others, 'friends' are nasty, husband withdraws and gets far too busy at work, mother-in-law blames the wife (for everything), nobody understands . . . That's Part One basically.  Then there's the development as in any novel - good things start happening, then more bad things, all sorts of struggles, more good, more bad, etc. 

The author gives excellent advice in the form of what they're all learning along the way, so I can see that this book has done very well.  Autism is still little understood, and popularising information about it this way is excellent.  The genre just isn't for me.

I doubt that this book is usually listed as one to do with parenting, but in fact the parenting Atticus does with his two children is absolutely brilliant.  He brings them up with a loving kindness and teaches them respect for all people, in fact for all creatures, while never talking down to them.  All of what Scout tells us is underpinned by their father's wisdom in raising them to be thoughtful citizens: 

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I'd never deliberately planned to not-read this book, but I seem to have always known of it.  That's not such a strange statement as you might think, given that I was born and bred (and still live) in New Zealand, where literature by American authors is no more nor less important than that by authors from Britain (or our own country, though when I was a schoolgirl the only NZ author I knew of (to my recollection) was Katherine Mansfield, and even she I didn't read until within the last few years).

A few years ago I actually added this book to my Goodreads to-read list, and finally it came properly to my attention.  "Right," said I, "I will borrow this from the library," and, as I've just recently discovered the pleasure of Audio Books, I reserved this specific copy. 

While I was waiting for it to arrive I read a blurb so I'd know a little of what it was about.  Well, I nearly found a reason not to bother with the book.  This is the blurb I read:

'Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.' A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

I absolutely did not want to read a book about prejudice and rape!  But then I glanced at a few of the reviews, and there were people who read this book again annually, and dozens upon dozens of 5-star ratings, so I thought there had to be something else to it.

Maybe the film (which I haven't seen, obviously, but intend to now I've had a look at this website) focuses more on the trial, but I would say that the person who wrote the above-quoted blurb had not read the book.

Atticus Finch's advice to his children (about killing birds) is nowhere chronologically near the defence he makes for Tom Robinson.  The book, in fact, spans three years - beginning not long before Scout starts school, and ending when she's coming up to nine years old.  This blurb (from my library's website) is more realistic:

Set in a sleepy town in South Alabama during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Six-year-old Scout and her friends are fascinated by the mysterious Radley place and its reclusive occupant. But their focus shifts when Scout's attorney-father is called upon to defend a black man accused of rape. Classic tale of injustice, friendship, and coming-of-age.

Two sentences, succinct.  And I'd agree that the prime focus in the first half of the book is 'the mysterious Radley place' and yes, the prime focus in the second half is the defence.  But there's so much else!

I was hooked from the very beginning.  I listened to Sissy Spacek, who I will always (please accept my apologies, Ms Spacek) associate with the movie Carrie, but this reading is far more memorable.  I'm sure I enjoyed it much more than if I had read it, because I could never hear that Southern accent in my imagination.  But the writing of the child, Scout, is brilliant.  She's a bright child, reading well before she began school, with an inquiring mind, but with all the same fears and interests that any child her age has.  She also takes everything her father tells her to heart, and tries very hard to be friendly and polite to everyone.  This causes some hilarious conversations, and some very important moments in the unfolding of their stories.

All the other characters are equally believable and the reader enters fully into the life of the little town of Maycomb.  What a delight!

This is a shorter post than I've been doing lately - I've been scrolling down and down to see if I had any other reviews that would fit this them, but I seem to have them all here!  It is, then, quite coincidental that I've read all five of these books within the last couple of months.  How nice.