'Dear Lucy' | Julie Sarkissian

Now that we’re well and truly into winter, you can’t avoid hearing “I can’t believe how cold/dark/close to Christmas it’s getting”, as if it doesn’t get cold/dark/close to Christmas every year. Not that I’m exempt from this; in true British style I find it impossible not to comment on the weather on a daily basis. Well, you can take the girl out of Britain…

All the more reason to curl up with a book when it’s gloomy outside!

I just finished reading “Dear Lucy”, the debut novel from Julie Sarkissian. Coincidentally this novel deals with similar themes to “Grace Williams Says It Loud” (read my review here), such as disability, abuse and relationships. Like Henderson’s writing style, the chapters narrated by the protagonist Lucy come across with a charming innocence and naivety. However what I found most striking was the way Sarkissian intermittently contrasted these sections with short chapters in the voices of other characters.

Lucy lives on a seemingly idyllic farm with an elderly couple known as Mister and Missus. Samantha, a pregnant teenager also taken in by the couple on the agreement that they will raise the child as their own, also lives there and has an unlikely but profound friendship with Lucy. As Samantha gets closer to giving birth, she has second thoughts about giving the child up and relies on Lucy to help her keep her baby.

The pace is rather slow and wandering up until this point, though not frustratingly so. But at this point shocking events that happened on the farm in the past become apparent and put Lucy, Samantha and the baby in danger. Lucy promises to save them all and the novel picks up speed with Sarkissian building up lots of tension, particularly when Samantha is locked in a room separated from her child.

One niggle I had was that there’s no real clue as to the setting of the novel – the author doesn’t give us much of an idea of the era in which the action is taking place, or even the location. However on further thought I think this could be down to her intention to make it seem like the issues in “Dear Lucy” could happen now, or anytime, and the lack of setting description any further than the house itself is because the idyll of the farm is central to the plot development and the notion that Lucy is in a bizarre and twisted bubble with no concept or experience of anything outside.

I started off feeling ambivalent towards the novel, but as I read on it grew on me and I was willing Lucy to succeed in carrying out the promise she’d made to Samantha. By the end I was inspired and impressed by “Dear Lucy”.

Find out more about this author on the Julie Sarkissian website.

'Grace Williams Says It Loud' | Emma Henderson

 Grace is put into the Briar Mental Institute aged 11. The doctors told her family there was no hope for Grace’s future. On her first day she meets another patient, Daniel, who brings out unforeseen life in Grace. Emma Henderson takes us through the following years of Grace’s life with refreshing honesty on mental illness - still a surprisingly taboo subject.

Grace barely speaks a word as she has severe speech problems. For me, this makes Henderson’s achievement of the compelling character all the more impressive, as she builds it up by depicting how others see Grace – doctors, family, strangers – and Grace’s own candid thoughts in the first person narrative. Grace notes everything about life at the Briar, from mundane activities, to her relationship with Daniel, to an account of sexual abuse at the hands of the dentist employed there.

There’s something quite Cuckoo’s Nest about the novel in some of the frank and honest sections of dialogue and scenes narrating the subject of mental illness, but Henderson still manages to keep her style and plot admirably original. It’s well thought out, creating a complex web of responses and judgements – about the institution, the friendship, and perhaps most of all, Grace’s parents. Henderson writes with sensitivity, integrity and thought; and I finished the book with the satisfying feeling of having learned things from it.