The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B

Written by Teresa Toten

Doubleday Canada/Random House of Canada

978-0-385678346

255 pp.

Ages 14+

For release August 27, 2013

When 16-year-old Robyn Plummer joins Dr. Chuck Mutinda's young adult OCD group, fifteen-year-old Adam Ross finds his motivation to get better and even grow taller. He still has deal with his compulsion to clear those triggers that bother him, like thresholds and even numbers, but when the group members are encouraged to take on superhero alter egos, he links himself to her by choosing Batman to her Robin.  

In fact, Adam becomes Robyn's unofficial mentor in all things Catholic after following her to the cemetery where she visits her mom's grave.  Seems Robyn is interested in pursuing the ingrained rituals such as crossing oneself and kneeling, hoping it will help her deal with her mother's death and her own OCD.  But Adam and Robyn's relationship starts to include the other members of their OCD group when a field trip to his parish is undertaken.  Although Chuck is clear that religion is not a panacea for OCD, the other group members, including the intense Thor, accompany them and learn about the font, the lighting of candles and kneeling in prayer, even if they all fall to their knees when Father Rick introduces himself.

While he continues to do all he can to help Robyn, obviously falling in love with her, Adam is very reluctant to speak in group or even in his one-on-one sessions with Chuck of those issues which are overwhelming him.  His father had left to marry another woman, Brenda, with whom he now has another son, Wendell (affectionately known as Sweetie), a four-year-old whom Adam adores.  Likewise, Sweetie has a strong attachment to Adam who is regularly summoned to calm or reassure or put his little brother to sleep.  In fact, Adam wonders if he is making Sweetie crazy, although his mother claims that he is not.  A highly-competent nursing supervisor, Carmella Ross, has her own issues, particularly hoarding and, more recently, receiving nasty letters that call her vile names and instruct her to kill herself for Adam's sake. But his mom has declared that if he tells anyone that it will be a betrayal to her.

So he lies to Chuck and others about the letters and even the growing severity of his issues with thresholds. But, as Chuck tells him and he later tells Robyn, when she reveals her own secrets, "Everybody lies."(pg. 146)  However, as he and Robyn become closer, he confides in her about his mom and the letters, which lightens his burden, until he gets home again.

Bouncing back and forth between trying to get better and following Chuck's program and feeling that Robyn is getting better and he is not, Adam begins to feel like an impostor, hardly a superhero of Room 13B. But, revealing what he needs, exposing some lies, and accepting that leaving is a difficult but necessary step in growing up, Adam can finally see himself as the reluctant hero that his family, his friends and Robyn know him to be.

If you forget the OCD, temporarily, you see that Teresa Toten has created a good kid in Adam.  He tries to see the best in everyone and help where he can. He may vascillate between whether it is or isn't or whether he should or shouldn't, but don't we all when trying to make the best of decisions?  With his OCD, Adam would be justified in having great difficulty in determining the correct course of action.  But, he still goes when Sweetie needs him, even in the middle of the night or during the school day.  He respects his mother's wishes.  He even suggests that climbing the stairs to their meeting room in Room 13B would be excellent exercise when he realizes that one group member with claustrophobia was unable to enter the elevator.

While Adam tells himself and others that everybody lies, the lies are used to add layering to The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B.  Everyone has fears, issues, anxieties and sensitivities that sometimes need to be hidden.  But what transforms the lies into a story is the choices of from whom these lies are hidden–yourself or others–and for what purpose.  Teresa Toten uses her characters' lies to provide greater depth and unexpected twists to her storyline, as well as demonstrate that heroics are everyday occurrences, not the domain of superheroes.  Some days it's speaking aloud in a group, or taking a chance and going for it, or breaking your heart to do what's right that requires courage.  By that explanation, Adam Ross, 15, is truly The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B.

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Teresa Toten will be a guest author at First Calgary Financial Book Rapport, part of Calgary's WordFest in October, and will be presenting at the Banff Centre on Saturday October 19. 

The Opposite of Tidy

by Carrie Mac

Razorbill

978-0-14-318091-3

332 pp.

Ages 12+

2012

This bright collage of covers of The Opposite of Tidy by Carrie Mac may depict some degree of clutter but nothing compared to the blight that is the home of fifteen-year-old Junie Ramsey.  Except for her room and the bathroom she uses, Junie's Vancouver home is a disaster of hoarded miscellany: storage boxes, garbage bags of clothes, craft materials, Chinese food cartons, pizza boxes, rubber bands, file boxes, and stacks of unopened packages. At the centre of it all is Junie's mom, Marla, who is obesely and emotionally bound to her armchair from which she compulsively buys from the Shopping Channel or the Internet.  Junie's father, Ron, had tried to be supportive but when he moved in with the life coach he'd hired to help, things went from bad to worse.  Regardless of her repulsion for her "disgusting" mother and her own desire for cleanliness and order, Junie has only shared some of her mom's problem with her best friend, Tabitha, and Tabitha's mom, Mrs. D., a Crown attorney.

When Junie is offered a ride home by Wade Jaffre, a new boy in Grade 11 on whom she is currently crushing, she can't possibly let him see that she lives at the house with the messed-up woman yelling at the man in the front yard.  So, she directs him a short way down the road to Tabitha's lovely home where she is lovingly greeted by Mrs. D.  So begins the subterfuge of homes, mothers and telephone numbers that has Junie running between houses, Tabitha upset with Junie for hiding the truth from Wade and preventing her from getting her mom's help when she sees rats in Junie's house, and Marla manipulating Junie with guilt and worry when she realizes she's unaware of Junie's boyfriend.  Fortunately, the one thing that is working out is Junie's relationship with Wade, who could win Boyfriend of the Year for his sincerity and affection for Junie.

Among the multitude of problems with lies (and there are so many) is the fact that they rarely are revealed at convenient or appropriate times.  So, when Junie sees a number of cop cars and TV vans outside her real home as Wade is driving her and Tabitha home from school, she doesn't think beyond her worry for her mother.  Big "oops" when she forces Wade to stop and then rushes to her mom.  While the drama at the house (courtesy of the appearance of talk show host, Kendra, who will be using Marla as her focus on a show about hoarding) delights Marla and the community, it reveals Junie's lies to Wade and exposes her dysfunctional family publicly.  This introduces new drama to Junie and Wade's relationship, and June's relationship with her mother, especially with attempts by Kendra's staff, including psychiatrist Nigel, to help Marla.

Hoarding may seem wildly fascinating to those who don't live with it but Carrie Mac ensures that the obsessive-compulsive nature of hoarding is seen as a complicated disorder in which those entangled attempt to sway others to their perspective.  Marla is hardly a sympathetic character, particularly in the manner by which she justifies her choices and manipulates Junie; however, I suspect she is not unique in this aspect.  Moreover, Junie vacillates between her revulsion, her anger, and her desperation to keep her mother safe, which probably explains why she feels the need to conceal her mother's condition.  By tying Junie's secrets to lies told to get and hold a boyfriend, Carrie Mac presents the story of a typical teen, eager to fit in and enjoy the firsts associated with young love, while dealing with some parental issues.  As such, Junie's story could be that of any teen, and young readers will undoubtedly find many connections with her which will help them to empathize with her situation. In The Opposite of Tidy, Carrie Mac's realistic depiction of a family's dysfunctional nature, hinged on a mental illness, provides a frank discussion of how the impact of a mental illness extends beyond the individual, as does its treatment.