Fly Away Home – Jennifer Weiner

Sylvie Serfer has subsumed her life in service to her husband’s political career without any sense of sacrifice – the incessant calorie counting, tightly pinching shapewear, coloured and painstakingly straightened hair, never ending briefings and engagements, the secondary importance of her daughters to Richard have all been her willing contributions to their success. They’re a team, working toward a common goal since their college days thirty years earlier. That all changes in an instant, when Sylvie’s best friend Cecil breaks the news that, according to reports on every network, Richard has apparently had an affair with a staffer.
The news not only affects Richard and Sylvie’s lives but the lives of their very different daughters. Diana is a prototypical eldest child, high achieving and determined to have everything – marriage to a man who’ll never let her down, a well-raised child exposed only to healthy food and wholesome viewing, and a professional identity in medicine. From the outside she has everything, but her carefully constructed life was already cracking, and the one thing she really craves is no more likely than ever before – her parents’ unconditional love and attention. Lizzie could not be more different – from early adolescence she’s sought from drugs solace, absence and the filling of a soul-deep emptiness. Clean after her latest detox, Lizzie is managing to keep all her balls in the air and is caring for Diana’s son Milo, but therapy hasn’t managed to repair her past. The revelation of Richard’s affair acts as the catalyst for change, changed perceptions, and the revelations of secrets and truths for the whole family.
Fly Away Home is an engrossing novel that engaged me on several levels – a fan of TheGoodWife, I was interested in an exploration of what these scandals may be like on the inside, but it was Weiner’s characters that kept me turning pages. Richard is the closest to a cipher, for most of the novel acting more significantly as a catalyst than as a character. Diana’s losses of control and the tensions that cause is really well conveyed; LLizzie’s attempts at refashioning her life are admirable and feel real; and Sylvie is a complex character who, despite being betrayed, is no saint – her uxorial devotion to Richard has caused a profound emotional neglect of her daughters that created the strongest resonance for me. My only disappointment with Fly Away Home was that, except for Sylvie’s response to the affair and its related aftermath, there’s preciously little anger. This was most significantly the case with Lizzie, who I hoped would be able to give voice to feelings of betrayal and abandonment at events (and, more crucially, her parents’ responses to them) that clearly contributed to her life path, but Diana has been aware from a young age how much their childhoods were shaped around the father's career, their mothe's priorotising this over their best interets, and the expectation that follows them into adulthood, and isn't angry either.
I’ve enjoyed Weiner’s work since Good in Bed, though I've found her recent work somewhat mixed, and Fly Away Home (apparently written earlier and recently recrafted and updated for publication) delivers a similar combination of satisfyingly rounded and layered characters, intelligent and believable dialogue, and a compelling plot. - Alex

Boys Don’t Cry – Malorie Blackman

Dante’s life is on track – provided he gets four good A levels he’s off to uni, a full year earlier than his mates, and ready for a life of freedom from his overbearing father and irritating younger brother, a future where he can earn money and have the holidays and treats his dad can’t afford. And though he pretends modesty to his family and friends, Dante knows the odds of him getting at least four A’s is good – he’s just waiting impatiently for the postie to confirm it.
The doorbell brings him a different kind of life-changing news, though. When Dante opens the door it’s to Melanie, a girl who used to go to his school, and to whom he drunkenly (and embarrassingly rapidly) lost his virginity to about a year and a half ago. Mel’s not alone, either – she’s lugging a bag, pushing a pram, and has a baby. Dante has no interest in babies , who squall and mewl and puke, and he’s at a loss to why Mel would suddenly reappear at all, let alone with someone’s kid.
Only it turns out to be his kid, who Mel’s been caring for at her aunt’s after her parents kicked her out. She needs Dante to look after it for a few minutes while she buys some things at the shops, and though reluctant in the extreme Dante agrees. But Mel never comes back, and she rings to say she’s not going to – she’s had enough and now it’s Dante’s turn.
Written in first person, with occasional diary extracts by Dante’s younger brother Adam, Boys Don’t Cry is a strong, compelling and beautifully crafted novel by the author of the Noughts and Crosses series, among others. It portrays with sensitivity and veracity a side of teen pregnancy not often acknowledged, and Dante’s transition from self-oriented, slightly immature teen to responsible adult is beautifully depicted.
There’s a significant secondary plot about Adam, whose sexual orientation is ignored and side-lined by Dante and their father until acknowledging it becomes unavoidable, and though a valid narrative arc in its own right also serves to reflect significant issues in the family dynamics – avoidance of discussing important issues, pretending unpalatable truths don’t exist, and an unspoken agreement to silence.
Blackman manages to fit in a number of significant teen issues in addition to these main aspects, including peer pressure, violence, the disinhibiting effects of alcohol, the complex nature of love, and depression.
Despite this sombre collection of themes Boys Don’t Cry is rewarding, uplifting and thoroughly enjoyable. I particularly liked the way the changes in Dante are reflected in his voice, most notably in his references to Emma, and the way he can see no other way of being, even as he changes. His resistance against his new reality and his efforts to maintain the life he expected to have are both poignant and amusing.
I’d forgotten quite how much I enjoy Blackman’s writing, and have also been reminded that there’s a fourth in the Noughts and Crosses ‘trilogy’ that needs to be read! – Alex

Anonymums – anonymous

Subtitled Three women, the truth and a whole lot of dares, Anonymums is an account of three Australian women (Mums A, B and C) – Mum A had met one of them several times at an annual writers’ festival, and the other online. In both cases the women clicked, and she suspected that they, like her, might be diminished by their lives as suburban wives and mothers. “Most days I felt like a zombie – a mindless, animated slave to two needy, demanding kids...” The final straw came when Mum A realised she had a cleaning sponge preference. And thus was born the project – for three months each Mum would get a dare from one of her friends and have to respond truthfully to a question from the other, with twist that the last months’ truth and dare had to be self-set.
There were guidelines – no skydiving, no affairs, nothing that could wind up on Jackass, no salsa – and the dares seemed relatively mild. In December Mum A had to go to a shopping centre, line up, sit on Santa’s knee, ask him for a steam mop and buy a photo for posterity, Mum B had to wear siren-red lipstick for a week, and Mum C had to have a Brazilian wax.
The truths were a little more challenging – tell me about the worst mother you know, tell me your most used sexual fantasy, tell the truth about how you sometimes wish you’d never have children. And in all cases the women found themselves changing, expanding, and challenging aspects of lives that had been mundane.
Anonymums is a recognition of the unrelenting monotony of motherhood, the inequality of parenthood, the frustration and resentment of the stay at home parent, and a realisation that this doesn’t have to be the case – I found Mum A’s self-imposed Big Dare, to change the running of the house and reduce the resentment she felt toward her husband, possibly the most interesting.
I also found her response to the question “tell me about the worst mother you know” fascinating, because of the way it challenged her to look at the truth of this woman’s life rather than her (admittedly distressing) behaviour born of compromise.
I also liked Mum B’s observation, on day 3 of a week-long dare to abstain from both chocolate and alcohol,

8AM
I have a headache. Could it be withdrawal? And if so, from what?
More likely it’s from hearing all about episode 24 of Ben 10. What happened to the Wiggles? That’s what I’d like to know. Then, we knew where we were: a bit of Hot Potato, a rock or two of the bear, point your fingers, do the twist and jump in the Big Red Car. But now, I’ve got ‘diamond-head guy’ and 'four-arm guy’ and eight other guys to deal with. If Big Boy actually knew anything about this cartoon I wouldn’t mind so much – but he’s never even seen the actual show. Won’t let him watch it because I think he’s too young.
Instead, I was watching firsthand the power of word-of-mouth advertising. Kids, it turns out, are naturals at it. Some kid came to pre-school with an enormous plastic omitrix-watch-thingy, and voila! The Game Has Changed.

I’m not a mother, though most of my friends are, and I have in my life children ranging in age from infants through to Lynn’s teens. I also remember the experience of co-parenting my younger siblings. I believe the hype about parental love being transformative and encompassing and amazing, but I also know it’s exhausting, unrelenting, consuming, never-ending and unrecognised. Anonymums redresses this somewhat, and I like the ending, where they are not only reinvigorated by vow to continue challenging themselves and each other.
I don’t need to re-read it, though, and have left it at the airport, hopefully to be picked up and perused by a mum in need of a reminder of her own identity outside the mum label. – Alex