Back+Roads

During this Christmas holidays I have finished the book I was reading: Back Roads, by Tawni O'Dell. I think this is her first novel. I can't remember who told me about this book, or if I read about it somewhere, but I can positively tell you that, surprisingly, I liked it a lot.

Why “surprisingly”? Because Back Roads it's a surprising, disturbing and unsettling work. It tells the story of Harley, a nineteen-year old boy who becomes the legal guardian of his three younger sisters (Amber, sixteen, Misty, twelve and Jody, six) since his mother started serving a life sentence in prison for shooting his father. He has to raise this three girls while working two jobs. He tries to do his best but we know from the beginning that he is not going to achieve it.

He tells us about his abusive father, his compliant and independent mother, his awakening to love with a married mother of two, his sisters' strange behaviour, his best friend's obsession with killing his younger brother... and, of course, his feelings about his dog and how he tries to protect him as well as his sisters. (I didn't know there was a dog in this story when I started reading it, I promise!) It's a bit difficult to summarise the book without giving away the main mysteries of the plot.

It's a really rough, difficult, sad story, a tragedy, we could say. Maybe I just liked it because I was in the mood for drama...

What I was really taken aback by was the point of view, how the story is told in first person, how Harley explains us all his feelings, all his discoveries, and how he is fitting all the pieces. He uses caustic humour to hide his pain.

The author focuses on the empathy, not in the illness. Harley tells us his story, his parents', his sisters' and the one that it's going on inside his brain in the first person. He doesn't make any efforts to explain his points of view, nor even his acts. He is not judged, his acts are only exposed. He tells us just the way his life is going down the drain.

Readers can't help caring very much about him and his future, if he actually has one...