CM Magazine: Saving Jasey.

________________ CM . . . . Volume VIII Number 9 . . . . January 4, 2002

cover Saving Jasey.
Diane Tullson.
Victoria, BC: Orca, 2001.
249 pp., pbk., $8.95.
ISBN 1-55143-220-X.
Subject Headings:
Problem families-Fiction.
Emotional problems of children-Fiction.

Grades 7-12 / Ages 12-17.

Review by Joan Marshall.

**** /4

exerpt:

Mom was looking at me like I'd lost my mind. I never take on Blake.

He crossed the kitchen in two steps, pushed his hand against my chin, and smashed me into the fridge. Magnets flew off onto the floor, followed by bits of shopping lists and business cards for furnace cleaners.

"Who asked for your opinion?" He released my head, then thumped it again into the fridge. The heel of his hand was against my throat, and I could feel my windpipe closing off. My feet left the floor. My eyes were probably bugging out.

"Let me down." It came out like a whisper.

Gavin's family situation is so horrendous that he often retreats to his friend Trist's home where he revels in the easy give and take of the seemingly perfect McVeigh family. Gavin is in love with Trist's older sister, Jasey. Slowly, inexorably, this position of safety begins to erode as Jasey and Trist face the fact that Huntington's Disease, which has reduced their great uncle to a shell in a nursing home, has also begun to claim their beloved grandfather. Huntington's is a genetic disease, and so Jasey and Trist know that they also may contract this devastating illness. As anxiety rises in the McVeigh household, Jasey begins to act out, getting involved with Gavin's older brother, Blake, a bully who is a stooge for the local drug dealer. Gavin's sympathetic, supportive teacher persists in teaching him to read, and Gavin persists in helping his brother in spite of Blake's abuse. The violence that permeates this novel culminates in a horrifying gun incident. Saving Jasey is, however, ultimately an uplifting story in which the characters choose forgiveness and life over revenge and despair.

The dialogue rings true to life. There are many amusing and touching school scenes. The lead sentence sets the reader's hair on end and the novel's final sentence evokes a satisfied sigh of recognition and relief. Gavin, Grandpa McVeigh and Gavin's battling parents are particularly well drawn. Gavin's mother is the epitome of the battered wife. Her husband, himself an abused child, creates an unpredictable bullying atmosphere in which his smoldering anger both terrifies and repels. Gavin is the quintessential grade eight boy, a boy becoming a man who still wants the love and security of a family. Saving Jasey shines an unflinching light on contemporary family life, showing how difficult it can be to overcome chronic illness and child abuse.

Highly Recommended.

Joan Marshall is the teacher-librarian at Fort Richmond Collegiate in Winnipeg, MB.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

Published by
The Manitoba Library Association
ISSN 1201-9364

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