In Victor Ladato's debut novel lead character Mathilda Savitch is supposed to be a feisty young girl, running about causing mischief. Her main task in this tale is to track down the killer of her older sister. Sounds like good old Nancy Drew-like fun, doesn't it?
Well, no. Not really. The whole problem with Mathilda Savitch is that Lodato hasn't explained to the reader how seriously mixed-up this poor girl is. It's not until the reader is far into the book that he or she begins to realize that Mathilda is more than full of moxie, she also full of neuroses.
This troubled child (age undetermined,but she seems to be about 14) has lived through her sister's death and now is watching her parents wither away: the mother from alcoholism, the father from enabling and shrinking into himself. Mathilda has become a forgotten person and no one is allowed to mention the deceased sister, Helene. And let's not forget that Mathilda wasn't too crazy about Helene when she was alive, so guilt looms large.
So what once sounded like such a lark becomes deeply depressing. Then throw in the fact that it all takes place in a post-9/11 America that's gotten far worse than we can imagine. Terrors have increased. Nothing has matched "when the towers fell," as Mathilda describes her childhood memory, but there have been bombings. Russians have lost their children in one incident and Mathilda still hears the mothers wail inside her mind. A terrorist with blue eyes tells the world, "You will all die," on television before he shoots himself in his turbaned head. Mathilda mumbles this to herself as if it were a mantra.
She makes a bomb shelter in her basement and invites her best friend and a neighbor boy whom she has a crush on to test it out. She's convinced that she and her friends will be the only ones left alive soon.
Are these normal activities of a young adolescent? I think not. Neither is ruminating about who the madman was who pushed Helene in front of a train. Mathilda goes on and on about how Helene died, standing on a rail platform, headed to a little-known town to meet a boy no one knew.
Time out here. All this is going on — mother drinking, father enabling, sister possibly murdered — and no one has taken Mathilda to see a therapist? Well, it seems someone has. She's been to see an aged shrink she calls the Tree because of his likeness to the unmoving, venerable object. The Tree is full of wisdom, but conversations with him aren't making it for whip-smart Mathilda. She quits and no one bothers to find her a replacement. So much for mental health.
Article comments
1 - Miss Bob Etier
Thanks, Lynn, I'll put this on my don't read list. --bob
2 - Lynn Voedisch
Like I say, it could be salvaged as a movie. As I read, I kept hoping that things would work out. But I guess the author had other plans.
3 - Jet Gardner
This is one I'm going to have to thumb through Lynn, thanks for the review