We live in a society that demands leadership; that
is in love with decisive action. If you
go to your local bookshop and look at any book on self-help title, that's what
it'll tell you to do. Make your mind up
and make a decision! The my favourite
one is from Teddy Roosevelt: " In any
moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best
thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing." The problem is that most of us are wrong
about most things most of the time. Of
course we are, it's how we learn. What
happens though if life-or-death decisions about your life, and that of your
little sister are thrown to you when you're just 16? Well I imagine you'd say you'd be
screwed. Well, that just about
summarises my latest book:
Walk Me Home is the latest
book by Catherine Ryan Hyde, though it is the first of hers that I have
read. Straddling the divide between YA
and Adult Contemporary, it tells the story of Carly and Jen: two sisters who
are travelling from New Mexico to California on foot as they flee towards the
only responsible adult they have ever known in an attempt to avoid going into
care. Their father is long-since gone,
their mother is recently gone (for reasons that are explained later and I will
not spoil), and the only adult left in their lives is Teddy - a man who Carly
loves and trusts beyond all else, but Jen has reasons to say otherwise - who lives hundreds of miles away and is uncontactable. They had no money, no transport and frankly
no hope.
After escaping starvation and
assaulty/rapey adults (and some nice ones as well) they find a cranky yet
kindly old American Indian woman who takes them in despite her catching them
stealing from her hen house. Jen is a
fan, Carly is not, leading to the sisters splitting before fate intervening to
reunite them at the end.
The first thing that I would say
about this book is that you have to suspend that part of your brain that tells
you that this realistic or believable.
The plot is frankly a little ridiculous and the characters it has to be
said are hardly original. However, there
are good facets to this book that I did enjoy.
The first is the drip-drip nature
of the story telling. It is written in a
flashback style, with part of the story being told in the present, and the
other being about six months in the past.
This means that at the start you have no idea why the girls are fleeing
or what it is they are fleeing from. As
the plot progresses then the pieces of the puzzle begin to fit together and you
start to build the picture, but just as the girls are confused about what is
going on, so is the reader. they don't
know who to trust or who to believe, and likewise neither do you. To quote Blackadder
: "it twists and turns like a... twisty turny thing".
The second facet that I liked
brings me back to what I was talking about at the start. Responsibility was thrust upon Carly as the
elder sister but, just like Lizzie Bennet in many ways, she is blinded by her
own prejudices. She hates her mother and
doesn't believe a word she ever said.
She implicitly trusts Teddy despite mounting evidence to suggest he is a
ne'er-do-well. She insists on trusting
no one else and on keeping on travelling, despite appearances that that may be
a little suicidal. With Carly it's her
way or the highway (in fact its more her way AND the highway). She is incredibly tunnel-visioned, and that
is both what keeps her and Jen alive, but also what leads them into great
danger. She doesn't know who to trust,
so she trusts no one but Teddy. While
this may not be a terribly original character, she is a very interesting one as she is intensely flawed.
This is in many ways a classic
coming-of-age story with a very readable style which never reveals too much;
keeping you hooked. It is a story about
'Home' and where to find it when your life is seemingly lost. It is a tale of hope and optimism in the face
of crushing odds which pushes all of the emotional buttons with more twists than
a Cornish country lane. It's faults are
many, focussed around the fact that most of the characters fail to act in any
sense rationally, but this does not stop this from being an enjoyable read.
7/10
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