I’d never given much thought to hoarding, but after reading Mary-anne Scott’s new book I’m seeing it everywhere. In the press. A memory of an uncle’s bedroom stacked with pillars of newspapers. I passed a couple of young boys on bikes, one of them saying: ‘I’m going to grandma’s. I hate it, the place is full of stuff.’ We get close to what being ‘full of stuff’ really means in The Mess of our Lives. This is no organised collection of things. It’s just a house so full of junk a woman keeps buying that the front door barely opens and there is no access to any of the rooms other than by tunnel to her armchair and TV. A nest for a bed. A barely functioning bathroom and a kitchen with rodents. But there is more in this book than a mother’s disorder. There is the effect it has on her kids.
Susan Baxter has two children, Jordan, a seventeen year old musician and Tabitha, his little sister. It’s Jordan telling the story of his home wreck and his growing despair over the inability of his mother to provide even basic care for him and Tabitha. He has commandeered an old caravan in the junk yard of their back garden and keeps it spotless and minimalist. Poor Tabitha curls up with her mum in the stinking nest inside.
Jordan’s school life is fraught. Mary-anne Scott does boys well. Here’s a boy with so much potential, bright and articulate with a gift for music – his absent dad was a guitarist – but who can never take a friend home, whose clothes often stink and who can’t shower regularly. He’s one of the odd ones left on the periphery at school. Pitied.
You get right inside this boy’s head as he struggles with all this shit he has to put up with: his arguments with his mother and his need to protect his sister balanced against this huge surge of desire to break free from the whole stinking mess of it. The music does help, and a music teacher at school who cares about more than just the music. A (borrowed) guitar helps Jordan keep his head together. It’s the music part of the story that lifts it right out of the mess and prevents it being unbearable. The music soars.
Most teenagers question how they fit in the world, how they fit in their family, judging when is the right time to break out and be themselves, apart. I can see boys getting right into The Mess of our Lives, substituting themselves and their own situations for Jordan’s, hopefully managing to see through the box of their own family life to the wider world, and to grow up making good (though hugely difficult) choices to take them forward.
Great book. Buy it for all the young people you know. They’ll think they’re reading a great story about someone else’s mess without realising what a smart author can really do for her readers. I’d recommend reading age from about 14 yrs until they leave home. Maybe tidy your house first?
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