Lisa O’Donnell - image from NY Times - photo credit - Vanessa StunpĪctual parents do not come across very well in O’Donnell’s world. The primary inspiration for this story came from her days in Scotland, but they were reinforced when she saw similar horrors after she crossed the pond and was living in East LA, children put in charge of children, wastrel parents, childhood denied. In an interview with Powell’s (link at bottom) she talks about the Thatcher-era environment in which she was raised. That boy from whom he sought temporary comfort in the park was not as old as he claimed and now Lennie must endure vandals spray-painting his property and enduring the shame of being on a sex offender list.Īuthor Lisa O’Donnell grew up in public housing to very young parents. They were never there for us, they were absent, at least now we know where they are.Across the fence lives an old man, Lennie, still mourning the loss of his soul mate of forty years. They just never showed up for anything and it was always left to me and left to Nelly when she got old enough. They used to call me wee Maw around the towers, that’s how useless Gene and Izzy were. I was changing nappies at five years old and shopping at seven, cleaning and doing laundry as soon as I knew my way to the launderette and pushing Nelly about in her wee buggy when I was six. Who is to take care of these two? I suppose I’ve always taken care of us really. But if the authorities find out, the girls will be separated for sure, tossed back into foster care, with who knows what sorts. No more concern about other sorts of abuse, too. No more need to worry about all potential food money going up noses, into veins or being poured from amber bottles. Mom, Izzy, made another in a lifetime of awful decisions and headed off to the shack to add her name to the list of those who have gone before. Put the pillow over her father, Gene’s, drugged out face and completed for him the self-destruction he had made his life work. Neither of them were beloved.Marnie’s little sister Helen, aka Nelly, has gone and done it. Today I buried my parents in the backyard. The book opens with one of the better first paragraphs I have read. How can anything survive? This is working class Glasgow and the girls are alone. Am I afraid? You bet your bottom dollar I am.The environment in which sisters Marnie and Nelly find themselves does indeed look poisoned beyond hope. Our planet faces extinction and yet nobody seems to care. Every day I wonder what the blazes can be causing this abuse of our ecosystem. What on earth is happening to the bees? They say it is an ecological disaster, an environmental holocaust.
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