Mona Simpson
Allen & Unwin
Otago Daily Times, October 11th 2014
Constructed as a mix of detective’s case-file and memoir, Mona Simpson’s 6th novel, Casebook, is a young man’s retrospective account of the defining events and relationships of his adolescence.
It all begins innocently enough when the narrator, nin-year-old Miles Adler-Hart jacks a spare phone into the house line so he can find out about Survivor, a TV show his mother won’t let him watch. He never learns what the show is about but what he does overhear reveals just how many holes there are in his knowing of her, and filling in those gaps soon becomes an obsession.
His initial concern is whether she is coping after their father leaves, but his worries become more serious when his mother’s new boyfriend, Eli, enters the family circle. Although Miles soon comes to like having him around and sees how happy his mother is in his company, there are several things that bother him. Eli comes and goes with no apparent pattern, on one occasion turning up for the night with a dog he says he is minding for a friend, then staying away for months to nurse a sick cat. He talks about moving in so he can join what he calls their ‘family romance’, but these, like so many other promises, remains unfulfilled. And whilst he claims his divorced wife lives with their son on the other side of the country, Miles is sure he has seem him with a woman and young child in the neighbouring city.
At first he and his best friend Hector (who also occasionally interjects into the narrative) try to find out what is going on by themselves, but eventually they resort to hiring a private detective to check into Eli’s background, and what they find out leave them in a moral quandary. Is it better to let Miles’ mother be happy even though it is an illusion, or tell her the truth and destroy the dreams she has been nursing for the last 6 years? And what does it mean about the nature and possibility of love?
Simpson is an accomplished author and provides Miles with what feels – at least to this member of her target audience – a believably teenaged vocabulary, perspective, and level of comprehension. Casebook is both a sweetly sad coming-of-age story and an eloquent reminder of just how much our children piece together from those unguarded conversations and emotional tells we all have. It is easy to discount just how important we are in our children’s lives, and how much responsibility they take for our own happiness. I am tempted to suggest should be required reading for all parents.
https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/through-childs-eyes
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