SHE'S NOT HOME

A teenager escapes her fault-finding mother in George’s novel, told in alternating perspectives.

In 2004, teen punk Sheena Taylor died in a tragic car accident, making her then-7-year-old sister, Mariana, “the kid who lived.” For a decade, her parents grieve in disparate, unhealthy ways: Mark disappears into his work, preferring the myth that he can abdicate daily parenting responsibility if he’s the sole breadwinner, while Sheryl searches for flaws and assigns blame with vigor. Sheryl even blames Sheena for her own death, telling Mariana that Sheena drove while high in order to pressure Mariana into being the perfect child. As Mariana approaches the age of 18, she starts to lose faith in her ability to deal with her mother’s emotions. Family violence figures crucially in Mariana’s best friend Cat’s story, with a scene at her house foreshadowing a pivotal fight between Mariana and Sheryl. Mark tries to mend his bond with Mariana by revealing the truth about Sheena’s death, which causes the teen to run away. During her first weeks by herself, she reckons with the nature of her sibling’s accident and her mother’s mistreatment. In the sections from Mariana’s point of view, George effectively conveys the feelings of self-blame and depression that come with years of emotional abuse. However, the sections from Sheryl’s perspective lack the same sort of depth, and her voice is often plodding. However, some reflections are beautiful: “A silence hit at times like this. In a movie, the world truly would go silent. The background would lose focus. In real life the silence came from within.” Still, readers may wish that Sheryl offered a memory or insight that revealed why or how her grief took the vitriolic form it did. The narrative also suffers from occasional redundancy and lapses into bland therapy-speak.

An ambitious and lyrical runaway story with some rough edges.