I return to my sketch. Time for the hands. I find hands the hardest to draw. My drawings of fingers always look the same. Yet fingers and hands are as unique to the subject as the face. Crooked middle knuckles on pinky fingers. Moles on index fingers. Ring fingers bending erratically to the outside. Fingers spaced too close together. Thumbs spaced too far from index fingers. Scars and calluses or smoothness with age or wrinkles with age or cracking with time and labour. These things make us who we are as much as our dreams and our memories and our laughter and our tears do.
Mum’s got a goofy smile on her face, staring at me. That’s her sentimental smile. That’s her memory smile.

Can you draw your trauma? I had a go at reading Lola in the mirror after my dislike of Boy Swallows Universe and I can’t say I liked this one either. Little short stories, accompanied by a drawing that someone made representing their life, scars and other trauma. It’s a book Social Services could have written about all the people who are on the fringes of society, domestic abuse survivors, runaways, children of druggie parents. Always victims. I’m surprised it didn’t come with a press here to donate link at the end of the e-book.

He said his own mother had danced the Tyrannosaurus Waltz for twenty years. He said the dancing took its toll. Changed his mother. Changed her heart and changed her brain. Changed who she was. Who she wanted to be. He said that every week of his life now in his day job he saw first-hand the ripple effects of domestic abuse, how the dance could make people do things they never thought they were capable of. Sometimes beautiful things, brave things. But terrible things, too. Sometimes even unforgivable things. And, to be sure, he added, the situation the artist found herself in might be the strangest and saddest ripple he’d seen yet. He asked how much she wondered about her unusual upbringing and how it had come about.

This is a novel all about heartbreak and love and some people will love it (much as I’ve seen the stellar reviews on GoodReads and some people like me will find it dreary and bleak.

He pushed it. He pushed the pram. I don’t think he meant to push it into that river. I don’t think he realised we were on such a steep slope. Just another one of his schoolboy tantrums. That stupid, angry man. But I had to tell all those cops it was my fault. I told ’em I forgot to put the brake down.’ She grits her teeth and makes a fist with her right hand. Bangs her fist on her thigh two times. ‘Like I was some spacey fuckin’ ditz who let her kid roll into the water.’

I liked a few stories, they had something poetic about them, about the dreams of a better life. But this ain’t Chicken Soup for the Mother’s soul or an inspiring tale of rags to riches. It’s a book about how the other half lives and we read it and contribute to charity and feel less bad about ourselves because we aren’t them. I was wondering when I was reading the stories, how many of them are victims of their own doing? Refusing to leave an abusive situation, putting their own kids in the middle?

So Why the low star rating? The writing is repetitive and overly detailed and I was skim reading at parts. I’ve read amazing long books by Dean Koontz and they are immersive in a way this book has failed to be. It could have done with better editing as I’ve found some spelling errors. It could have done well with a bit of a trim-back but I’m not sure if the author got paid for word/page and wanted to have a lot of filler.

None of the characters are likeable enough and the cops and villains chase was 5 pages too long.

Cringe book. But hey, try it out and let me know if you liked it.