Nothing to See Here
Ratings178
Average rating4.1
I enjoyed this, but thought so much more could have been done with the premise, which felt (no pun intended) half-baked.
Lillian Breaker doesn't have a lot going on. She's working two cashier jobs and smoking weed in the attic of her mother's house. So it's not like she's going to say no when an old friend reaches out for her help. Especially considering how ridiculously wealthy said friend is. What's even better is the favour amounts to taking care of 10 year old twins who just happen to spontaneously combust.
There are tropes aplenty that stretch the bounds of reasonable believability. Of course outsider Lillian would befriend upper crust Madison. That a shared love of basketball is enough to bridge a massive class divide and maintain a long distance friendship over the years. That Lillian taking the fall for Madison and getting expelled from school, dashing any hope of reaching escape velocity from her fabulously crappy life, isn't enough to dent this bond. Meanwhile, Madison, still incredibly rich, has married a senator with aspirations to the presidency. I mean this what your teen movie nemesis origin story looks like, this is how you play up the villain not how you set up Lillian to start babysitting Madison's husband's little fire children.
But then I'm warmed by Lillian with the kids. I mean none of us are truly up to the task of raising children and are bound to fail miserably in countless ways everyday. Children are incredibly unstable and volatile things prone to violent outbursts and flaming tirades. But at the same time “Maybe raising children was just giving them the things you loved most in the world and hoping that they loved them, too.” That it takes nothing to be a parent but everything to try and be a good one.
But then this is all blunted by the fact that raising children is perhaps easier when it comes with a perfect little cottage to call one's own, filled with books, toys and access to any number of servants, a pool, basketball court and anything else money can buy. I get it, money a good parent does not make, but boy does a generous sprinkling of it make everything better.
Re-Read thoughts:I picked this for book club and decided to re-read it as a refresher, this time via audiobook from the library. It holds up for me! I couldn't put it down again. It's written in a relatively simple way that still manages to just convey who each character is so efficiently and move the pace along briskly. Just a fun read!———Original Review:What a wonderful book.There was something so charming about it to me. The main character isn't exactly a new archetype: the narrator who has had a tough upbringing, yet is naturally witty and intelligent, able to raise herself up, only to come crashing down at times due in part to her inability to fit in. But hey, it's a fun archetype when it's done this well. The character feels fully alive for this entire book and is just fun to spend time with. I actually thought it was really interesting that this was written by a male author and told in a first person viewpoint from a female character, with almost all the important secondary characters female as well. Maybe I don't read enough, but that seems very rare. The character relationships felt authentic to me and were very touching. I loved how the narration effortlessly jumps around in time. The narrator will recall a past event and began discussing it in the past tense, and as the scene develops, it somehow just gradually becomes the present tense, and as a reader you are just living in that moment now, completely invested in these new surroundings and it's happenings. Then suddenly you are snapped back into the real present and the weight of that event washes over you. Just beautifully done. I haven't even talked about the main thrust of this story yet, which I kind of wish I didn't know about before starting it, so I won't even mention it here even though the cover art gives it away. I'm a sucker for this kind of “magical realism” and I loved it here, I was constantly arguing with myself about what it symbolizes and how it would develop in the story. This is one of my favourite books I've read in awhile. It gives me the same feelings in a lot of ways as when I read [b:The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 1618 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Mark Haddon https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1479863624l/1618.SY75.jpg 4259809]. Shout out to my wife for recommending this to me, she had taken the ebook version out from the library on a whim since it was trending and looked interesting, and after she got a few chapters in she found a hard copy at the library so that I could read it as well.
Kevin Wilson, you beautiful genius, you've done it again. I was so invested in these characters I didn't even want it to end! I found it tragic, uncomfortable, heart warming, bizarre, and smacking of truth. How does one person even fit all of those feelings in one book? Brilliance.