By Laura Schroff
I actually read this one whilst I was too poorly to do the thousand and one tasks I normally carry out each day whilst I listen to books on my Audible app. I read it on Kindle on iPad because it has a stand and I felt just too rough to hold a book up. It’s been a while since I’ve read a book from cover to cover in two days and it felt really good, like being on a beach holiday. Although with no sun, a steadily filling bin of disgusting tissues, the cleaning needing doing and no swimming pool, I won’t be rating this hotel highly on Trip Adviser!
When I looked at the first few pages, I realised it was a non-fiction book. I think we may have read books loosely based on real events (I definitely have in my other book clubs), but this is our first non-fiction. I don’t ‘do’ non-fiction as a rule. I like a good break away from the every-day and lean towards some honest to goodness flight of fancy straight from someone else’s weird mind, rather than listening to my own random head-blatherings. But, just as recently I have decided I need to let my own mind-ramblings have some free-time each day, I decided that if the book club ladies had decided on it in my absence, then I should give this story some time and attention too.
I’m rather glad I did. At first, during the introduction, I thought it was going to be about a person’ woke-signalling’ that she had done a good thing and she was ever so humbly putting her story to paper so that she could tell the world not to laud her as being an angel here on earth as she was the one who was blessed. (How could we applaud her if she hadn’t written the book?!) That thought shows more about my cynical mind and how little I trust people in the media since our everyday news is so full of people self-promoting and feathering their own nests, generally treading over the bodies of people they have clawed out of the way to get there. This is what went through my mind during the intro to this book: ‘The world didn’t know I had done a nice thing, so I told them’. She wanted her 15 minutes of fame!
However, what follows is a story of the meeting between a woman who had overcome a terrible childhood and a child who had no idea there was a way out of his, arguably, worse one. The daughter of an alcoholic abuser and the child of a drug-ravaged dysfunctional family who, but for a split-second change of mind, would never have met. However, the premise of the story, the title, bases this decision on a philosophy that we are bound by an invisible thread. The thread may tangle and may stretch but will never break. These two were destined to meet and stay in contact for the rest of their lives.
On the surface, these two couldn’t have been more dissimilar. A successful 30-something lady, unmarried and living alone in a good apartment and the 11-year-old boy (actually 12 as we find out later) whose whole family is either addicted to or selling drugs, or both, begging on the streets for change, living in one room in a shabby hostel, often with up to 11 other family members. He was hungry, dirty and uncared for, not, as he points out, unloved. Just loved by people who know no better. He didn’t realise you could make your life better, he just assumed that life was about getting through each day, surviving, and making decisions for the next hour.
However, as we work our way through the story, jumping around the timeline in a bit of a haphazard manner so it’s hard to get the chronology straight, often with bits repeated in the intro and the epilogue and the footnotes from Maurice himself, it turns out that the leap of faith they both had to take helped them find their common ground in how they care for each other, crossing the line from a charitable kindness to a friend, and very quickly into family and enduring friendship.
What surprises me is she strived to protect herself, especially in the early stages of the relationship, not from the possibility of Maurice or his family stealing from her or hurting her in some way because she opened up her home and heart to him: rather she protected herself from the possibility of her attentions towards him being misconstrued in some way. He was a third of her age and of course, some people suspect her intentions towards him, and, I suppose, rightly so, for his benefit. However, when she had been to see where he was living and met his mother and grandmother, she soon realised that they had accepted her place in his life and were grateful in their way for it, not being able or knowing how to provide it for him themselves. It astonished me that so much money was passing through the hands of the family and yet they still had nothing. The evil that drugs do to people’s minds and bodies is so incredibly obliterating. I have to wonder why anybody would start it. Why would they take a chance with their own bodies, their own minds? This leads me to wonder what must be happening in their lives to make a slow and hideous death the better option at the fork in the road?
Laura didn’t just hand out money or report Maurice’s family to the state to get him and his siblings moved into care so she could feel good about herself and move on. She gave him time, care and commitment. She made him his lunch during the school week and left it for him in a brown paper bag to collect. She did buy him things, and she fed him and provided a lot for him, but she also gave him space and education. She taught him things he would never have learned whilst surviving in the family home. She taught him values and standards.
It wasn’t a one-way street though. He taught her almost as much and she seemed to discover the world again through his eyes. She gained a friend and knew that he relied on her. Sometimes we all need to be needed. She fulfilled the mother role and he fulfilled the much longed-for child role.
So, Sarah the Cynic! Was she just writing a self-congratulatory money spinner? No I really don’t think so. It is a book about the random kindnesses that are done daily, by many, many people all over the world, for many reasons. A book about changing a life and making your own better by return. It is teaching us that giving our time and attention is often better than just handing over money and telling us that maybe we should put ourselves out there to help someone who might not ever be able to help us in return.
Paying it Forward and random Acts of Kindness are two of the concepts that have gathered pace in recent years, although genuinely good people have never had to have social media to give them the idea to pay for someone’s shopping when they find their card being refused, or to hand a cup of soup to a homeless person. We all give to charity and donate our previously loved items to a shop to resell, but how many of us, genuinely, would make lunch every day for a junkie’s child so he never goes hungry a full day? Hands up: not me.
We all do things for people that we know and care for, and even donate goods or money to charity, but I guess the people that actually do things for strangers is relatively few.
The message I took from this book is that the smallest kindnesses you perform can make the biggest difference in someone’s life. It’s a heart-warming read that I enjoyed and would recommend, especially if you enjoy shedding the occasional tear.
Another thing I loved about this book is that modern fiction, especially American fiction, is often about race and racism in society. Laura is white and Maurice is black, but their story is not of race or creed, just kindness and altruism. Their colour is irrelevant to the story and unimportant to them as it should be for all of us. Their race doesn’t pull them together or set them apart. That is truly heartwarming.
I still maintain that I don’t ‘do’ non-fiction and I’m warning my wonderful friends of Between the Covers: I draw the line at reading any autobiography of some second-rate, here today, gone tomorrow survivor of a celebrity jungle or thong-wearing Love Islander, so don’t even suggest it! 😂
I really see why this book became our read of the month though. The person who suggested it is an incredibly kind and giving person and it is an obvious book for her to recommend.
I did enjoy this book very much and feel I might look at things slightly differently now so because of that, I give it 8/10. It loses points because of the occasionally mixed-up chronology, and the repetition throughout, often, in fairness to the author, as in the retelling of any real-life tale, can become muddled and a little awkward to follow.
Sadly, most of the ladies of Between the Covers didn’t enjoy it as much as I did. They found it too depressing to enjoy it, although our discussion on the evening did sway a couple of minds to consider it slightly differently.
The evening was beautifully hosted by Marie, and we had a really good long discussion about the book, despite some of the mixed reviews. The sign of an excellent book club book is always that we have a lot to say, good and bad.
34.5 / 50 (6.9/10)
Our next book to be discussed at the May meeting is The Silver Dark Sea by Susan Fletcher. It’s a mythical tale of the sea and romance according to Amazon where it scores 4.3/5.
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