Source of book: Audiobook from the library.
When she wrote Raymie Nightingale, Kate DiCamillo had no idea she was starting a trilogy. The story of three young girls coping with loss and abandonment apparently resonated not just with readers, but with the author - she says she couldn’t get the other two out of her head, and ended up eventually writing about them.
In the original book, Raymie was reeling from the breakup of her family - her father left them for another woman, and they had to move to the small Florida town that forms the setting of that book.
Two years later, Louisiana ends up leaving suddenly with her eccentric grandmother (eccentric is probably too mild of a word) and ends up abandoned in a motel having discovered that everything she thought she knew about her background was a lie, before finding a more permanent home.
This third book, set four years after the original, is all about the third girl, Beverly Tapinski. Buddy, the faithful dog from the first book, has died, and Beverly feels that she has lost all her roots. She never knew her father, Louisiana is gone, and her mother is increasingly drunk and uninvolved.
On a whim, she hitches a ride with her cousin, ending up alone in a beach town, with nothing but the clothes on her back.
In order to survive, she takes an under-the-table job busing tables at a restaurant, and is befriended by an old lady in a trailer park. She also finds friendship with the boy who works at the mini-mart, Elmer, and discovers they share a love of poetry and beauty.
This is 1979, so things were a bit…different. It wasn’t as hard for a clever 14 year old to get a job, and people weren’t as suspicious. Keeping this in mind is crucial to finding the story plausible. Or at least as plausible as the other two books. DiCamillo isn’t striving for absolute realism here. (No flying squirrels with magic powers in this book….)
Beverly starts the series as less appealing than the other girls. I mean, you know she has had a rough go of it, but she is arrogant and uncooperative and more than a bit of a jerk. In this book, we get to see a better side of her - she is hard working and resourceful, and shows good judgment of who to trust and who to avoid.
Beverly’s first choice is to go apply for a job. She puts aside her visceral distaste for Freddie, the waitress (who reminds her of her mother - dreaming of being a famous model) enough to realize that Freddie is essentially harmless. (Unlike Freddie’s boyfriend, Jerome, a dim-witted bully.)
Although he seems at first to be vaguely sinister, the owner of the restaurant turns out to another damaged yet decent adults that populate DiCamillo’s stories. His marriage broke up, and he rarely sees his children, who live out of state - his goal with the restaurant is to support his kids. Although he is paying his employees under the table, he also has taken on workers who were rejected elsewhere. It’s…complicated. As is the low grade strike the cook and dishwasher put on near the end of the book.
Beverly is then befriended by Iola, and the two of them form a mutually beneficial relationship.
Finally, there is Elmer, a boy on the verge of college - on a scholarship to Dartmouth no less - who has endured bullying and a lack of support from family, but who is kind to all. It takes some work for Beverly to break down his walls, but the two of them become friends.
From the beginning, we know that this will not be a permanent arrangement - Beverly is too young to be truly on her own - but her summer adventure is also clearly her first real taste of independence, and proves to her that she has a future beyond her mother’s dysfunction.
DiCamillo writes fascinating books - they aren’t particularly “pleasant” exactly: lots of bad things seem to happen to the characters - but they are always filled with hope, and with resilient and resourceful protagonists. I also appreciate that there are always adults who are willing to listen and not just lecture, who give children the respect they deserve.
DiCamillo herself refuses to belittle or dismiss the emotions of children. She doesn’t condemn Beverly, even when she makes questionable decisions. Rather, she focuses on what Beverly is doing right, and how she feels about things in her life. While few of us ever ran away from home for months at a time, many of us probably wish we could have. (I definitely did - my teen years had a lot of good in them, but they were also a LOT harder than they needed to be, due to the belief system that said that “rebellion” was the worst of sins, and that children had to be trained to obey without questioning - in essence, to reject their own humanity and normal development. I’m glad I didn’t leave home, but I wanted to many, many times.)
That is perhaps one of the best things about this book. DiCamillo recognizes that awkward time, caught between childhood and adulthood, when kids like Beverly find they are already carrying adult-level emotional burdens, while being disrespected as children. Unsurprisingly, when Beverly does decide to go home, it isn’t her mother she calls. She calls Raymie.
Any of the three books can stand alone, but I think it is best to read them in order.
No comments:
Post a Comment