On the Spectrum

Written by Jennifer Gold

Second Story Press

978-1-177260-042-1

336 pp. 

Ages 13-18

September 2017

The push for books that reflect diversity has been extending more recently to include those with characters on the spectrum or with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as does On the Spectrum.  But, unlike the recently reviewed Slug Days by Sara Leach (Pajama Press, 2017), On the Spectrum takes a different approach, placing the character on the spectrum in a secondary role, as a step-brother to the teen protagonist, thereby providing a different perspective to life on the spectrum. 

In On the Spectrum, the protagonist Clara is a sixteen-year-old whose issue is orthorexia i.e., an unhealthy preoccupation with how much and what she eats.  After a social media faux pas and the intervention of social workers disturbed by her ballerina mother’s own extreme healthy lifestyle fixation, Clara heads to Paris to spend the summer with her Dad, his new wife Mag and her half-brother Alastair, a six-year-old child on the spectrum.  While visiting Parisian tourist attractions and adhering to Alastair’s routines, Clara begins to learn about her little brother’s behaviours and needs, like his weighted vest and use of noise-cancelling headphones to help him calm, and starts to really care about him.  Conversely, Alastair is learning about his sister, putting together the pieces of what he overhears from his parents’ discussions and interpreting her words and actions, convinced that, though Clara denies it, she must be on a spectrum herself, on an eating disorder spectrum.  Complicating matters for Clara is Alastair’s friendship with Michel, the son of a local baker, who whips up amazing pastries and meals with Alastair and is convinced he can help Clara enjoy food once again.  

Young adult author Jennifer Gold, whose previous books Soldier Doll (Second Story Press, 2014) and Undiscovered Country (Second Story Press, 2017) have been reviewed on CanLit for LittleCanadians, gives Alastair voice through Clara’s narration; only through his sister’s interpretations do we hear what Alastair says and does.  It’s still a valid voice but it reads very differently from the first-person narrative of Slug Days or Spaghetti is Not a Finger Food (Jodi Carmichael, Little Pickle Press, 2013), both of which are written for younger audiences.  But then again, On the Spectrum is Clara’s story and Alastair is akin to her sidekick who is there to help steer and illuminate her thinking, which he does so effortlessly both about his autism and her issues.  He may be on the titular spectrum but apparently Clara is on one as well.  The spectrum, whatever it may be based upon, is broad, indicating that there is no one way of being autistic or having eating issues.  Even being different is different for everyone, and Jennifer Gold's Clara and Alastair and all those in-between make that abundantly clear.

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(A version of this review was originally written for and paid for by Quill & Quire but space limitations prevented its inclusion in the recent October issue.)



Undiscovered Country

Written by Jennifer Gold

Second Story Press

978-1-77260-031-5

320 pp.

Ages 13+

April 2017

I feel the familiar wave of sadness overtake me, trapping me underwater, stealing my breath.  Here in the jungle, it is easier to forget my grief.  Sometimes, it feels like something I forgot to pack, something there wasn't room for in my suitcase, and I feel I've won, I've escaped.  Then I remember, and it feels as fresh and raw as it did the night she closed her eyes for the last time. (pg. 125)

Seventeen-year-old Caitlin Marks' grief is as raw and unrelenting as the environs of Bolivia  to which she has thrown herself as a volunteer for nine months with Students Without Boundaries. SWB is Cat's way of running from Ohio and the recent death of her mother from cancer and a father too wrapped up in his own anguish to be a parent to his daughter. But what Cat discovers is that grief resides everywhere, in different forms, and can travel as easily as she does.

Told in alternating perspectives of Before and After, Undiscovered Country is Cat's story of the months leading to her mother's death from cancer and then her experiences as a volunteer in the village of Calantes, a community of poverty, violence and political unrest. As the reader learns of Cat's mom finding the lump in her breast and subsequent gruelling chemo, loss of hair, struggle for dignity and affliction with brain cancer which ultimately takes her life, Cat struggles with balancing being the support her mother needs and going on with her own life, taking her SAT, dealing with peers who see her in terms of her mother's illness, and planning for school at Stanford.  Each step is a struggle of emotions and logistics, helped only somewhat by her sessions with Dr. Shapiro who diagnoses her with Bipolar II.  Bolivia undoubtedly seems like a chance to really help while escaping the overwhelming torment of her sadness.

Sadness is like cancer that way, an unwelcome guest that takes the body or the mind hostage, stripping the joy... (pg. 138)

In Calantes, Cat meets bunkmates Margo who's there to appease her ultra-competitive parents and outdo her cousin who just got into law school; Taylor who'd flunked his first year of college after coming out as gay to his wealthy family; and Melody, a devout Christian, whose self-righteousness masks hidden traumas. And, though everything reminds her of her mother–make-up, Diet Coke, pretzels–Cat soldiers on, meeting the handsome local Rafael and others in the village where she ends up working in the rudimentary infirmary.  But, as she and fellow SWBers  struggle with their emotional baggage, the people of Calantes must deal with their social and political strife, troubles which Rafael is adamant can only be solved with dangerous actions.

The ambiguity that is Cat is normal after a tragedy.

Sometimes it feels as if there are two Cats–the one who longs for love and companionship, who's lonely and desperate for affection, and the other one, who's desperate and desolate and pushes people away, almost determined to stagnate in her grief. (pg. 187-188)

It's unfortunate that Dr. Shapiro and others in Undiscovered Country are so quick to label sadness and grief as mental illness in need of medication.  Cat's foray into a third-world country to volunteer and ease her impotence in helping her mother may not be ideal for all but it works for her, allowing her to discover herself and others in new circumstances.  Without realizing it, Cat's explorations abroad and within challenge her to accept her new normal.

Jennifer Gold, author of Soldier Doll (Second Story Press, 2014), again takes the issue of grief and connections and creates a story of loss, confusion and redemption, with honest characters dealing with realistic challenges but this time in a contemporary setting.  Her characters are dealing with grief, cancer, sexual abuse, foster care, sexuality, family expectations and the teen angst of relationships, peer and romantic.  It's a lot for them to deal with and a lot for Jennifer Gold to tackle.  Still Undiscovered Country, unlike most of us and most definitely Jennifer Gold's characters, never stumbles, instead exposing different paths of salvation to life's struggles, some safer than others, but all viable and very real.

Soldier Doll

by Jennifer Gold
Second Story Press
978-1-927583-29-6
256 pp.
Ages 13-18
March 2014

One doll. Five wars. Many hearts touched.

A summer yard sale doll, with a cherubic face and a soldier's uniform, is the quirky birthday gift fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Bryant picks up for her dad, an engineer shipping out with the military to Afghanistan in a few weeks.  Just recently relocated to Toronto from Vancouver, Elizabeth goes to check out the neighbourhood and wanders into a bookstore where she meets Evan, an older teen who works there.  Talking books, Elizabeth and Evan learn they share an appreciation for author Margaret Merriweather's work, and he introduces Elizabeth to her poetry, including her famous poem, "The Soldier Doll." 

As Elizabeth delves into the poem, she discusses the possibility that the doll of which Margaret Merriweather wrote may in fact be the doll she purchased for her father.  While the reader will know this to be true from the historical anecdotes involving the soldier doll that are interspersed in Elizabeth's narrative, the teen, her parents and Evan set out to discover the mystery of the doll, looking into its provenance and journey to the Toronto yard sale where it was found.

The little soldier doll, originally a girl's keepsake after the loss of her mother, is shared years later with her fiancé as he heads to France in 1918.  Though the soldier doll is thought to be lucky by his fellow soldiers, it begins the next step of its journey when the young man is killed and the doll ends up in an antique shop in Germany.  Without spoiling the story, suffice it to say that the soldier doll is present when Jewish people were being rounded up in Berlin, when the Red Cross comes to assess the conditions at the concentration camp at Terezín in Czechoslovakia, when young American soldiers seek the Viet Cong in Da Nang, Vietnam, and after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 when the war on terrorism begins.

Almost a century of history is witnessed by the unusual wooden doll, privy to secrets and shared fears, watching death, destruction, kindness and hope all twisted together.  With Elizabeth and her family endeavouring to learn its complete story, Jennifer Gold is able to bring the Soldier Doll home, both in the story and with her writing.  Wrapping all that history in a mystery makes for an intriguing read.  While I thought that Elizabeth's dad knowing an archaeologist/historian was a tad convenient, I realize that with his history (pun intended) of seeing the fantastic amongst his yard sale finds he'd probably reached out to everyone and anyone who could verify them as authentic.  And in a story where a doll is able to reach across time and place and work magic on those who held it, I think that coincidences may be more fortuitous than contrived.

Jennifer Gold is very astute in using the doll as the focus for discussions of life and death, war and peace, and responsibility and honour.  Even as the narrative moves from World War I to World War II and ultimately to the recent war in Afghanistan, I wondered about those who enlisted or were drafted and went to war under a banner of duty or compassion, and ultimately had to face the horrors and tragedy of war.  The wars that the soldier doll witnesses may have different names and locations but those who live and die through them are always the same.

"I wasn't sure what the right thing to do was.  I don't think the right thing was that clear.  I guess it never is, not in a war, really." (pg. 263)

Not much has changed.  But, just as history is apparently told by the victors, the Soldier Doll lives on because of those who endured or lived long enough to share its story. And though one veteran acknowledges that, "It's hard to be the one who lives" (pg. 265), the living are critical in keeping those who passed alive.  Just like the soldier doll does.