Sorry For Your Loss

Written by Joanne Levy

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-4598-2707-3

250 pp.

Ages 8-13

October 2021 

Yes, Sorry For Your Loss is about death and grief. But it's also about respect and honour, life and support, and friendship and family. It's about being there for people, both the living and the dead.

"...being there for people in their time of need is an honor." (pg. 32)

During the summer between her Grade 7 and Grade 8 school years, 12-year-old Evie Walman is working part-time at her family's funeral home, Walman Memorial Chapel. She replenishes supplies like toilet paper and paper towels, ensures visitors have a ready supply of tissues, and does general tidying and vacuuming. She doesn't mind. She wants to be a funeral director like her dad and intends to learn all she can from him and her mother whose counselling background makes her a full partner in the family business. Evie has learned much about the Jewish funeral traditions and how to be respectful but sometimes her chattiness gets the better of her. However, that talkativeness may be just what is needed when she meets Oren Katzman.

After a terrible car accident which killed his parents and left him with bruises and in stitches, as well as an arm cast, Oren no longer speaks. Evie meets Oren while his uncle, Jared Silver, makes arrangements at Walman's, but, though she tries to help, she ends up feeling like she says all the wrong things. She does put her craft skills to work creating a paper quilling project for Oren to represent him and his parents but it's not until a chance meeting at the cemetery has Oren spending days at the Walman's house with Evie while his uncle is at work that the two really learn about each other. They're not going to become friends–Evie is determined not to have friends–but they form a seemingly tenuous bond based on grief, compassion, and their common need for support.

Though I know author Joanne Levy is no longer of middle-grade age, she easily gets into the head of any twelve-year-old who wants to fit in and be liked, and who experiences loss and doesn't know how to ask for help. At first glance, the silent Oren and talkative Evie might seem like complete opposites with Oren having lost his parents and Evie's family still intact. But the two kids are more complementary of each other, giving what the other needs, even if they don't know it. Their relationship is crafted on small things like watching TV, eating ice cream and paper quilling, but founded in loss and hurt that both are experiencing. Through the exploration of the Jewish traditions, from the tahara to the shiva, Oren and Evie search for understanding with the help of the other, and create something new for themselves and those around them, easing the grief a little bit at a time.