All the Fine Young Protagonists
A Two-in-One Fiction Review by James M. Fisher
Image by freepikI’m combining reviews of two new fall 2024 books into one as they both have some things in common (such as the protagonist as a young person) and can appeal to the young adult reader. To be fair, Stephanie Cesca’s Dotted Lines is not marketed as a Young Adult (YA) novel like Valerie Sherrard’s An Unbalanced Force is, but they are very similar in tone, so I will take a look at both here.
Dotted Lines by Stephanie Cesca
Dotted Lines is Ms. Cesca’s first novel and I was quite interested in reading it. The cover shows a Maple tree in early autumn, the leaves just starting to turn red. As such, it reflects the timeline of the book, as it follows Melanie Forsythe from age seven to her adult years, a span of about 26 years.
We meet (in 1983) Melanie as a young girl living a hardscrabble life with her mother Abby. Abby works as a waitress, and as it’s a Saturday when the book begins, Abby takes Melanie along and sits her in a booth with a colouring book and crayons for the duration of her shift. It is during this shift that Abby introduces Melanie to Dave, a regular customer and informs Melanie that they will be moving in with Dave. There is no indication that Abby and Dave have ever met outside of the diner, so this takes Melanie (and the reader) by surprise. Dave turns out to be a super nice guy and all goes well until Abby finds herself pregnant by Dave. The pregnancy is not welcomed by Abby like it is by Dave and to a lesser extent, Melanie, for she sees her mother wasting away as her pregnancy goes on. Soon after she gives birth to Jessica, she disappears, leaving Dave with a newborn and Melanie.
The remainder of the novel follows a linear timeline narrated by Melanie as she passes from child to teenager to university student at which point she meets up with Jason, a young man from her past and they move in together.
The term “Dotted Lines” comes from a very poignant scene in the book when Melanie is tasked with a school project about family. She doesn’t know her father, Dave is not her stepdad, her mother has vanished and she and Jessica only share a mother. (Abby’s parents have disowned her. She left home at eighteen, apparently pregnant with Melanie?) Dave has her draw dotted lines (instead of solid) to him as a non-relative guardian. He shows Melanie that she has more family connections than she realizes.
Dave took a minute to think about it, grabbing his eraser, He sat for a second then put the eraser down, raising his eyebrows.
"Got it,'" he said, Starting with his name, Dave made a dotted line, diagonally linking himself to me.
"You see?" he asked. "It shows that, while we're not biologically related, we're still family. You're still my little girl. And, here, I'm adding the same kind of line between me and your mom. We weren't even married, but we're still connected."
I looked at the tree and smiled. The dotted lines connected all of us, together. "So we're still family?"
"We are," he said. "Of course we are.”
Dotted Lines was a good, if not predictable story. There is no sex and some bad language (near the end), so it may be more suitable for mature young readers (as well as adults). Melanie and Jessica are two very different girls, Jessica being more like her mother, rebellious and unmanageable. Melanie is also afflicted with Trichotillomania1, which goes untreated (and unnoticed by others, which I thought a little odd). Dave accepts both girls as they are and he does his level best to provide a life for them. Dave is by far the most likeable character in Dotted Lines and I think the story if told from his perspective (and perhaps Jessica’s too) would have made for a more engaging read. Nevertheless a fine debut novel. Available October 2024.
About the Author
Stephanie Cesca was born and raised in Toronto, where she lives with her husband and three children. A former newspaper editor in both Canada and Europe, she holds an English degree from Western University, a journalism degree from Toronto Metropolitan University and a Certificate of Creative Writing from the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. Her work has been shortlisted for the Penguin Random House Canada Student Award for Fiction and The Marina Nemat Award for Creative Writing. Dotted Lines is her first novel.
Book Details
Publisher : Guernica Editions (Oct. 1 2024)
Language : English
Paperback : 150 pages
ISBN-10 : 1771839058
ISBN-13 : 978-1771839051
An Unbalanced Force by Valerie Sherrard
I’m not sure what number of book this is for Ms. Sherrard, but her bio says she’s written over 30 YA books, so she pretty much has the formula down for a good YA read. I’ve read several of her past novels, and I truly enjoyed them. Ms. Sherrard has the gift of not “talking down” to her young readers, her prose is direct and full of food for thought for young and old alike.
“Ms. Sherrard has the gift of not “talking down” to her young readers, her prose is direct and full of food for thought for young and old alike.”
The epigraph for An Unbalanced Force is Isaac Newton’s first law of motion, that “an object in motion remains in motion….unless acted upon by an unbalanced force”. Let’s see how that plays out.
Ethan Granger is on summer vacation before his final year of high school. He and his mother and father live a comfortable existence, thanks to his father’s business, which is never made quite clear to Ethan or the reader. In fact Ethan and his mother are oblivious to Mr. Granger’s comings and goings, all to do with his “business”. Out-of-town trips are never questioned and it’s all accepted as part of life at the Granger household. Until one day when Ethan spots his father in town when he was supposed to be away on a business trip. He parks his car and gets into another car with a couple of other men. This of course plants a seed of doubt in Ethan’s mind and so he becomes the “unbalanced force” that acts against his father’s “object in motion”.
What “forces” does Ethan employ? He employs a private investigator who is sympathetic to his cause. She follows Mr. Granger to a house in a rural area, but discovers little more than that. Undeterred, Ethan (who doesn’t have a car) enlists a car-owning friend, Aki to sit and watch the comings and goings at the house. They discover no pattern in the people who visit the house, leading to more questions than answers. Eventually, Ethan discovers what his father is truly doing, leading him to face a moral and ethical challenge. What will he do with the information?
Ethan, while coming across as obtuse in connection with his father’s business, is likeable, as are his friends Aki2 and Owen (who offers a bit of comical relief). They are non-judgemental of Ethan, while offering good advice. On the other hand, there is Ethan’s on-again-off-again girlfriend Nora. She is an unbalanced force of her own, and Ethan has a hard time handling her at times. They eventually break up and there’s a long period of silence between them. Interestingly, the story is very male-heavy with Nora and Ethan’s mother as the only females in the book.
Like Dotted Lines, An Unbalanced Force is a good story, but it left me unsettled as I found it hard to believe that Ethan would never ask where his father was flying out of town to, or ask him about where he was when he returned. It was also odd that his father had to “leave town” when he was only going a few miles out of the city. Why could he not come home each day?
I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t enjoy An Unbalanced Force as much as I liked some of Valerie Sherrard’s other books, which I have kept in a prominent place on my bookshelf. However, I liked aspects of the book, particularly the way Ms. Sherrard handles Ethan’s moral and ethical crises and particularly the ending. Available November 2024.
About the Author
Valerie Sherrard is the author of more than 30 books for children and teens, including the multi-award-nominated Birdspell and the novel-in-verse Standing on Neptune. Her work has won or been shortlisted for the TD, GG, Geoffrey Bilson, Ann Connor Brimer, and CLA Awards, and numerous readers’ choice programs including the Forest of Reading, MYRCA, Red Cedar, RMBA, Willows, and Hackmatack Awards. Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, she now lives in Miramichi, New Brunswick.
Book Details
Publisher : DCB Young Readers (Nov. 9 2024)
Language : English
Paperback : 200 pages
ISBN-10 : 1770867643
ISBN-13 : 978-1770867642
About the Reviewer
James M. Fisher is the Editor-in-Chief of The Seaboard Review. He lives in Miramichi New Brunswick with his wife Diane, their Tabby cat Eddie and Buster the Border Collie. James works as an MRI Technologist at the Miramichi Hospital.
Trichotillomania, also called hair-pulling disorder, is a mental health condition. It involves frequent, repeated and irresistible urges to pull out hair from your scalp, eyebrows or other areas of your body. You may try to resist the urges, but you can't stop. Trichotillomania is part of a group of conditions known as body-focused repetitive behaviors. (Source: Mayo Clinic)
Aki is the obligatory gay character.