Three Short Books
. . . which have NOTHING to do with each other except that I read them all recently and liked them all.* I liked three books in a row. This doesn’t happen.
Say Yes, by Audrey Couloumbis.
I had read her Getting Near to Baby when it first came out, and liked it a lot. Say Yes is entirely different, barring the kid-getting-on-with-her-life-in-difficult-circumstances aspect, although this is an entirely different kid in entirely different difficult circumstances.
Twelve-year-old Casey lives alone with her stepmother, Sylvia; her dad died two years ago, and they both still miss him. But Sylvia is the sort of person who needs to have other people to hang onto, to cling to. She holds on to Casey, which Casey both likes and doesn’t like, and she hangs onto her boyfriend. The boyfriend doesn’t like Casey, and the feeling is mutual.
One morning Sylvia is particularly affectionate as Casey gets ready to go to school. Casey maybe wonders a little what is up with her—but only a little. Until she gets back from school and Sylvia isn’t there. She doesn’t come home that night at all. And she left some money in an envelope under a magnet on the fridge. Sylvia doesn’t leave money around.
It’s not really till the next day, when Casey notices that the freezer is full of her favourite dinners, and none of Sylvia’s—and that Sylvia’s clothes and stuff are gone—and she tries the boyfriend’s phone number and it’s been disconnected—that she begins to realise how much trouble she’s in. . . .
The Big Bazoohley, by Peter Carey
‘Like most grown-ups, Sam Kellow’s parents never guessed that their son ever thought about money. . . . But in truth Sam knew a lot about how much things cost, and when the family arrived in Toronto in the middle of a blizzard, he knew they were there to sell his mother’s latest painting to the mysterious Mr. Edward St. John de Vere. He also knew they were down to their last fifty-three dollars and twenty cents.’ And the hotel they’re staying at is very grand: ‘He watched his father tip the doorman five dollars and the bell captain two dollars, and when the porter brought their single suitcase to the room, Sam saw how much Earl Kellow gave him and he knew they now had only forty-four dollars and twenty cents left in all the world. . . .
‘Vanessa Kellow['s] . . . tiny paintings showed entire cities. Not just the buildings and the streets, but the bakers and butchers, and the stews bubbling in the pots, and the freckles on the faces, and the cat sleeping in the basket, and the fluff under the beds, although you could not see these things without a special magnifying glass, and then you might find a ruby ring in a secret drawer or a jar of blue-and-green striped candy in a cupboard. . . . People would go crazy when they saw his mother’s tiny paintings . . . and if they were rich people, they would pay a lot of money. . . . ’
The mysterious Mr de Vere ‘“ . . . has a mansion which is totally underground. You reach it from a door on the Bloor Street subway platform.”’
Except that when Sam’s mother goes to deliver her painting she discovers that the entrance to the mansion has disappeared.
And their hotel room costs four hundred and fifty-three dollars a night. Plus tax.
But the hotel is also playing host to the Perfecto Kiddo competition. The winner will take home $10,000. Sam is more the grubby, backwards-baseball-cap type than the Perfecto Kiddo type, but emergencies demand drastic action. . . .
Owl in Love, by Patricia Kindl
‘I am in love with Mr. Lindstrom, my science teacher. I found out where he lives and every night I perch on a tree branch outside his bedroom window and watch him sleep. He sleeps in his underwear: Fruit of the Loom, size 34.’
She is not kidding when she says she perches on a tree branch: ‘I am Owl. It is my name as well as my nature. There are birds of prey in my family going back hundreds of years, one every two or three generations . . . by night I seek my living in owl shape . . . By day I am an ordinary girl (more or less) attending the local high school.’ And while it is not unusual for fourteen-year-old girls to develop crushes on their science teachers, there are complications in this case: ‘I am Owl; it is in my nature to give my love once and only once in a lifetime. I shall love him until I die, or he does.’ And Mr Lindstrom is forty years old, and has a wife and a son—a son about Owl’s age—although no one seems to know anything for certain about the son; there is an awful rumour that he is insane, and is kept under restraint in an asylum, and that this is why Mr Lindstrom’s wife left him.
Owls are solitary creatures; Owl has never had a friend aside from her parents. But in science class they are about to have to prick their fingers for blood samples—and Owl’s blood is clearly not human. She needs an ally—an ally who doesn’t mind providing a second blood sample. That ally is Dawn, who has guessed Owl’s passion for Mr Lindstrom, and invites her home to experiment with potentially science-teacher-attracting make-up. Owl, rather bemusedly, agrees. ‘Dawn’s house was nice enough inside, I suppose, if you like all that furniture and that glaring sunlight pouring in at the windows. To my taste it seemed awfully cluttered. . . . You couldn’t walk ten feet in any direction without bumping into a piece of overstuffed furniture. . . . A few rotting branches or some old leaves would have made the place look a lot homier, in my opinion. . . .’ There is a tricky moment when Dawn offers Owl, hungry after another night of keeping watch rather than hunting, her hamster to hold: ‘“Here, pet him . . . he’s really friendly.” . . . I have been carefully raised. Hungry as I was I could not be guilty of such a violation of proper conduct as to eat my hostess’ pet. . . .’
Owl has lately been watching Mr Lindstrom’s house with more purpose than mere longing. There is another shape-shifting owl who has taken up residence in the woods behind Mr Lindstrom’s house. A young one—a young incompetent one. Owl cannot decide if she should run him off what she considers to be her territory, or help him learn to be what he is. For the moment, she decides to keep a wary eye on him: ‘I will try for larger prey to stave off my hunger, and so be free to watch by the window longer. I have sometimes caught fat rabbits hopping in the moonlight around our frozen vegetable garden. . . . .The garden of a were-owl at midnight makes a perilous salad bar.’
They’re all three funny and warm and lovely in their very different ways; each author has a sharp, individual style and something to say. I recommend them all.
* * *
* And were in the same dusty box under the bed only recently discovered. Sigh. I didn’t think there were any more dusty boxes of books under there. In fact I’m sure there weren’t. So I have a new theory. There’s a hole in spacetime under my bed. Boxes of various items come through occasionally. This particular hole does seem to have a predilection for books, but there are worse things. At least I know what to do with books.^ There was a random-selection box not long ago that was pretty challenging.^^
^ Put them in piles. All over the house. Reading is good too. But creating and rearranging the piles is the important thing.
^^ Especially the intelligent squid who had lost her navigational widget and taken a wrong turn.
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