Book Reviews

At the Water’s Edge

Alison Acheson (Author)
Mud Girl. Coteau Books
Buy this book from Amazon.ca

Roger Maunder (Author)
Mundy Pond. Tuckamore
Buy this book from Amazon.ca

Reviewed by Elizabeth Galway

These two recent titles for young adults detail some of the real and very complex experiences of children coming of age in Canada from coast to coast. Set in British Columbia and Newfoundland respectively, these novels explore the difficult challenges faced by female and male protagonists on the brink between childhood and adulthood.

Alison Acheson’s Mud Girl is the story of a sixteen-year-old girl living on the shore of the Fraser River. The ramshackle house that Abi shares with her father overhangs the river, its precarious position mirroring the lives of those within. The novel opens at the start of the summer holidays, which the protagonist greets not with excitement, but with the fear that “now the days are going to be long, and they’re going to be spent with a man who used to be her father, but is now a stranger.” The story unfolds at a pace that reflects the feeling that the “summer is long when you’re sixteen.” Without the distraction of school the days drag for Abi, whose parents have recently abandoned her in different, but equally damaging, ways. While Abi’s mother has left altogether, without explanation, her father has abandoned her emotionally. Unable to cope with his wife’s departure, he retreats into himself and becomes, for his daughter, a “dead person.”

Like her house at the river’s edge, the protagonist herself is poised on a brink—that between adolescence and adulthood. When she meets the slightly older but much more experienced Jude, she must negotiate the murky waters of love and sexuality, which Acheson explores with frankness and a keen sense of realism. In her own home, Abi becomes both the breadwinner and the housekeeper, and after she meets Jude’s young son Dyl, whose neglectful parents in many ways parallel her own, she makes a choice that changes life for them all. The teenager at the heart of the novel is a girl full of “many questions,” many of which remain unanswered, but Abi “knows a few things” and increasingly relies on her own innate intelligence and judgement to answer these questions, and to evaluate her relationship with the attractive, but self-centred Jude.

Acheson’s novel explores what happens when a child must assume the role of the responsible adult. The author successfully captures some defining aspects of adolescent experience, but the novel also has a dreamlike quality to it, including the somewhat surreal nature of the odd house that Abi lives in, and the adult characters of Ernestine and Horace that she befriends along the way. The novel’s conclusion may seem too sudden for some readers, but this remains a work that will be of interest to those concerned with questions of teenage sexuality, independence, and the shifting boundaries between adulthood and adolescence.

Like Acheson’s novel, Roger Maunder’s Mundy Pond is set during the summer holidays, but the story unfolds at a faster pace. Set in the community of Mundy Pond, Newfoundland in 1978, this is a grittier novel that also creates sympathetic characters for young readers to engage with. At its heart are eleven-year-old Gordie McAllister and his twelve-year-old friend Jimmy Birmingham. The novel highlights both the simple childhood interests of these friends, and the stern realities that each must face. Against a summer backdrop of baseball games, bike-riding, and games of hide-and-seek, the boys face serious struggles. This is not an idyllic depiction of childhood, and Maunder captures with terrifying reality the very genuine fears some children must face. Gordie has a comfortable home and two loving parents, but must deal with the impact of his father’s infidelity on the family, and the uncertainty of whether his parents will be able to put their marriage back together.

Jimmy, a boy who has developed a tough exterior in response to his extremely abusive father, has an even more heart-wrenching story. Although Jimmy is fearless in the face of his peers, he must stand by helpless as he repeatedly witnesses his father abuse his mother. Although he can tackle any bully his own age, Jimmy is powerless against his father Randal who “was familiar to all the kids that played on the street. Everyone knew who he was and they were all frightened to death of him. . . . They all knew Randal Birmingham was nasty. And they all knew he was Jimmy’s dad.” Disturbingly, the reader begins to witness a growing similarity between father and son. As one character observes, “‘Little Jimmy’s got more of his mother in him, though there are times I can spot the father. Just a glimpse but I see it.’”

Jimmy’s story moves towards a dramatic climax that raises some complex questions about justice and morality. The conclusion of Maunder’s novel is sure to provoke debate, and will be of interest to those concerned with the ways in which children’s literature grapples with issues of power, authority, victimization, and revenge. From Jimmy’s abuse by his father, to Gordie’s first kiss from a girl, Maunder writes a compelling novel about two boys growing up quickly, and explores the ways in which childhood experience can help determine the kind of adult that one becomes. Neither Mud Girl nor Mundy’s Pond idealises adolescence, but each depicts the ways in which sympathetic young characters attempt to gain some measure of control over the world around them.

This review originally appeared in Canadian Literature #197 (Summer 2008), Predators and Gardens. (pg. 113 - 114)

***Please note that the articles and reviews from the Canadian Literature website (www.canlit.ca) may not be the final versions as they are printed in the journal, as additional editing sometimes takes place between the two versions. If you are quoting from the website, please indicate the date accessed when citing the web version of reviews and articles.