Sometimes that might have been as simple as asking, “Are you okay?”. I know there are kids out there that I worked with, where often I could not get to the bottom of the issue they were facing, until I found the right question. And, sadly, it also shows how easy it is for us, as adults, to firstly, ignore the problem but secondly, to just not listen and ask the right questions.
It reveals the incredibly difficult circumstances some children are forced to live in, through no fault of their own. How they control the person they are bullying and those around them. It demonstrates the power a bully can have over a young person. I don’t want to say much else, as this is a text that everyone should read.
I was entranced and even though we don’t hear Ella speak, you can feel her sadness and loneliness. However, she builds a relationship with Mary which is beautifully conceived and shown through the delicate images. Sadly just like Mary, she is alone as her father is never there and her mother is absent. However, she climbs through a gap in the fence drawn to the place by a figure she sees in the garden. She can see Thornhill from her bedroom window and it’s derelict and overgrown. They’re black and white and reflect Ella’s lonely and rather dark life. It’s beautifully illustrated and it’s a long time since I have had to read pictures to understand a narrative. Her relationship with the bully made me weep, as time and time again she falls for the nasty, vicious tricks that are played on her. When the summer’s stifling heat takes over her room and she is desperate to breathe, you feel the house is as much a trap as a home. Thornhill itself echoes her despondent existence she is isolated at the top of the house. It astonished me that she could be so overlooked for being quiet or mute. I was so drawn into Mary’s existence that at every turn, when an adult turns up in Mary’s life, I wanted them to rescue her. They existed in the 1980s and I am not convinced they don’t exist today. And I don’t think we should hide behind the fact that places like Thornhill, where young girls who are struggling to be fostered are living. She is persistently bullied by the girls she lives with at Thornhill and is repeatedly ignored and left to struggle on her own. Mary’s story is told through her diary from 1982 and it is a hard hitting read. There are two narratives in this wonderful novel about two teenage girls who live 30 or so years apart. This is not a book for the faint hearted. I was so stunned at the end that I had to take a break from writing a blog about it, to absorb the message and the story.
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