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Fitting In.
Sharon Kirsh.
Grades 6 - 9 / Ages 11 - 14. ***/4
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excerpt:
"What did you get for Christmas, Mollie?" Betty shouts through the cold moist air floating from her mouth in a lingering, puffy cloud.
THIS COMING-OF-AGE novel by Sharon Kirsh takes place in the sixties, the setting a small coastal city one assumes is Halifax (due to the descriptions of the ice-free harbour, the small Jewish community, and the city's two synagogues, one Orthodox and one Conservative.)
The story's main character,
Mollie, is forced to examine what it means to be Jewish. A friend
announces that Mollie, unlike herself, is lucky because she doesn't
"look very Jewish," and this brings Mollie to consider, for the first
time it seems, how different she is from most people in her community.
She also realizes that many associate being different with being strange.
But it's a different event that really forces Mollie to reexamine the
cultural differences that exist around her: Mollie attends a youth group
meeting at the synagogue where they show a film about the Holocaust.
Apparently Mollie has been
sheltered from knowledge of the horrors associated with the Second World
War. When she learns that millions of Jews were killed, she reacts with
shock and disbelief. Her family provides only a few words of comfort, and
Mollie is left feeling alone, confused, and alienated. And just when
Mollie needs support and reassurance, her best friend Naomi has suddenly
become preoccupied with events in her own life and has neither time nor
words of consolation. Mollie does have the support of another friend,
Elizabeth Ann (Mollie's "link to the Christian world"), who insists that
though there are cultural differences, those differences will never
affect their friendship. But other neighbourhood children think
differently, and plague Mollie's family with anti-Semitic name-calling
and acts of vandalism.
Kirsh's novel is occasionally
too wordy for a young adult audience, and not written in an adolescent
vernacular. And Mollie's naivete is sometimes unbelievable. At times she
appears childlike and unaware of what goes on around her; at others she
seems mature beyond her years. But that may just be a symptom of growing
up -- Mollie herself admits that she sometimes feels "like a stranger" in
her own body, one day feeling all grown up, and the next acting like an
innocent child.
Despite some flaws,
Fitting In does a good job of examining the true meaning of
friendship and the sensitive issues surrounding cultural and religious
tolerance -- important themes for young people growing up in Canada's
cultural mosaic to consider. I applaud Sharon Kirsh for bringing these
difficult issues to light.
Recommended.
Sara Brodie presently works for Dalhousie University Libraries in Halifax. She has recently returned from New York where she worked for the Brooklyn Public Library.
Fitting In was reviewed by classes across Canada as part of the Collaborative Book Review Project. You can read the students' reviews at the Collaborative Book Review Project site.
To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cmeditor@mts.net.
Copyright © 1996 the Manitoba Library Association. Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without permission.
Published by
The Manitoba Library Association
ISSN 1201-9364