Last fall when I began my search for possible books to add to the 2016 survey that the Book Club members at my library vote on, Karen Harrington's Sure Signs of Crazy kept popping up. I run an adult book club not a children's book club, so it wasn't a natural choice for me to add to the survey. But then I had not one but two requests for the book more or less back to back. And then a copy showed up as a donation! When the universe decides to tap me on the shoulder once, I can ignore it but multiple taps need to be addressed. I took the book home for a weekend read.
I quickly fell in love with Tree-Stump-Standing-Best-Friend-Is-A-Plant-Atticus-Finch-Admiring Sarah Nelson. More over, I felt that the Sarah's story was compelling enough to add to the adult book club survey as a potential option. My book club selected the book along with Go Set a Watchman featuring Atticus Finch as perceived by a more mature and jaded Jean Louise (Scout) nd 9 other books. I thought that Sure Signs of Crazy would be a good follow up and companion piece for Go Set a Watchman.
Earlier this week, I read another Harrington book Courage for Beginners. My expectations were not disappointed. Now, I need to see about reading her newest book
Mayday. Both Sure Signs and Courage are hopeful. Both tell painful stories of children thriving in dysfunctional homes. Both heroines have voices that ring heartbreakingly true to life. But these girls on the cusp of becoming women are not to be pitied, neither would appreciate it. The are courageous survivors and will end up just fine in the end.
Sarah Nelson spends her summer vacation trying to discern potential signs that she is her mother's daughter or equally unappealing her father's. Sarah's mother is and has been for quite a while incarcerated for the murder of Sarah's twin brother and the attempted murder of Sarah herself. She tells us that we all heard the story and we did. Sarah's questions are those all adolescents have but hers have their own unique depth. Is who we are or will become determined by who our parents are? Will she become crazy like her mother or an alcoholic like her father? How can she find her individual voices in this noisy world? How can she ensure that no one ever takes advantage of her vulnerabilities? Who can she safely share her deepest secrets with? These are scary questions, questions that she can't share with others because that would mean revealing too much. She has decided that she can only confide in her best friend--who happens to be a plant. Sarah makes a good case for having a plant as a best friend--I look at my own slightly different now. Sarah's life is complicated by the fact that her father uproots them every year when people twig on to their past. Sarah is desperate for some continuity, answers and security in her life and fears that if she doesn't get it she might just come undone.
In Courage for Beginners, Mysti Murphy's family problems lies not in being uprooted but rather quiet the opposite. Her problems inhabit 1400 square feet where secrets are overheard but never discussed. Mysti has never been outside her zip code because there is a nefarious world out there. But what happens wen the family's enable is removed from the equation and his return is speculative at best? What happens when your other caregiver needs more care than she can give? What happens when changes find you and you have never been prepared for them? This is Mysti's story. As if navigating middle school isn't challenging enough, Mysti must find a way to get her family safely through the unknown--an unknown that she has grown up believing that dangers lurk everywhere waiting for the unsuspecting.
The book club had a very lively discussion of Sure Signs of Crazy. Most felt that the themes were handled very well but were very adult. Should children really be exposed to mental illness and alcoholism? Shouldn't we protect the young ones from the real world out there? But this is the very reason that I applaud Harrington. Statistics tell us that one in five adults are living with substance abuse and/or mental illness in the US. A large number of children live with this reality every day. Consider a class room on 28 children with 56 parents. Statistically 11 of those children or approximately 1 in 3 of the children are coping or not coping in varying degrees with problems at home that our society doesn't want to expose children to because talking about it is uncomfortable and stigmatized.
Children of dysfunction privately have questions and want answers about what normal behavior is and how can they mimic it. They are great observers and some turn to literature to help them understand their world. Sarah Nelson looks to Atticus Finch to help her navigate normalcy. Children of dysfunction can create elaborate stories and rituals that help them gain a sense of control in a world that is unpredictable at best.
I was in my 30s before I was able to identify depression as the most likely name for my family's dysfunction with unpredictable cycles of darkness and light that I tried to control with unsuccessful superstitions and rituals. Each day, I would approach home with trepidation, what would I find behind Door Number 1? My senses were honed so sharply that one stiff would provide the answer. Cigarette smoke = darkness/ fresh air = light.
In junior high, I began searching out books that would help me decode my world. I read one unmemorable story after another telling me that homes were worse off than my own filled with stock characters acting predictably. Train wrecks that inevitably right them selves by the last chapter. But the protagonist never had the power to determine how they would respond to the the things that the other people created.
The stories I read were not Harrington's stories. Mysti and Sarah can be easily recognized as real girls. These girls are deeply thoughtful and they are wise beyond their years. Not because their characters do not ring true but because they have been parentalized. These girls can laugh, love, and most importantly of all hold on to hope that the future will be brighter. They will survive and they will thrive.
I applaud Harrington for putting a very human face on mental illness and the children who grow up having to carry secrets deep inside while they activity wonder about and covertly observe what is normal. I look forward to reading Mayday before the year is out.