Michelle Superle's review from University of Manitoba CM Magazine
Alison Acheson’s newest novel for teens is a work of brilliance, most closely resembling the work of Canadian YA icon Martha Brooks, yet with an understated genius all its own. In Mud Girl, protagonist Aba Zytka Jones—Abi—spends her sixteenth summer contemplating life’s biggest questions. Abi lives in a vividly rendered shack-like house perched on the banks of the Fraser River in Delta, British Columbia. The building’s dilapidation and precarious hold on the bank mirrors her father’s tenuous hold on his mental health; his depression began after Abi’s mother left the previous year, and it leaves Abi a virtual orphan. During the school year, she traversed a narrow, subsistent existence, but this summer she actively seeks out meaningful relationships and a job, although she still faces the same emptiness in her home life.
Abi asks herself a lot of questions about her mother’s decision to leave the family, but she doesn’t come up with many answers. Her searching, however, enables the emotionally emaciated girl to make productive connections with several new people who come into her life. Each quirky and delightfully believable, the secondary characters in Mud Girl add an impressive depth to the novel. Abi finds surrogate relatives (father and mother? uncle and aunt?) in Horace the kindly bus driver and “Ernestine,” the Big Sister volunteer. Amanda, a more helpful and responsive “big sister” than Ernestine, gives Abi a job and some valuable perspective on life and relationships, both familial and romantic. Jude, the lost and self-centered boy who becomes Abi’s boyfriend, is her foil, and their faltering romance allows Abi to learn to trust her own judgment and intuition. Jude’s mother, Lily, and his son, Dyl, also enable Abi to grow, and she repays the chance they give her a thousandfold. By the end of the novel, Abi has grown from a confused, frightened child to a much more decisive young woman who is aware of the realities of both her limitations and power.
Every element of Mud Girl is just right. The characters are round and realistic, the plot compels page-turning, the setting symbolically mirrors the theme, and the resolution is satisfying. Particularly impressive is Acheson’s use of language. Every sentence is understated yet filled with a full depth of meaning while the diction is gratifying for its warm poetic rhythm. Mud Girl’s best quality, though, is its tone. Acheson manages to strike the almost impossible balance between hope for Abi’s future and the true direness of her current situation. That this is done without the least hint of heavy handed didacticism is even more striking.
In a genre crowded with depressing mediocrity, Acheson has defied the norm by producing a work of high artistic quality that is also fully accessible to young adult readers. It is a pleasure not to be burdened with another cookie cutter slick teen throwaway story. Mud Girl is a compelling novel—easily the best YA book of the year. It deserves to be in the hands of every teenager in Canada.
Highly Recommended
Michelle Superle teaches Children’s Literature and Composition at the University College of the Fraser Valley.
Donna Gamache's review from Prairie Fire - a Canadian Magazine of New Writing
Mud Girl
by Alison Acheson
Regina, SK: Coteau Books, 2006, ISBN-13: 978-1-55050- 354-8, 317pp., $12.95, paper. (Young Adult).
Mud Girl, by BC writer Alison Acheson, is a book that teen readers will surely enjoy. It is the story of sixteen-year-old Aba Jones, called Abi by her friends. Abi lives with her father in an odd shack-like house that hangs precariously over the lower Fraser River, in Delta, not far from Vancouver. The water runs underneath the greenhouse, and Abi feels the river might carry them off in the same way other things are getting away from her. Her mother had run off a year ago, and her father, having been laid off at work, spends virtually all of his time sitting in his chair watching mindless television programs, forgetting to eat or do anything else. He barely notices Abi or even acknowledges that she does the housework and sometimes makes meals. The story begins at the end of June. Abi has just finished grade eleven, and she is not looking forward to the long summer ahead. At school she is an outsider, at home a loner, with no real friends, unsure of her future and not understanding her past. Why had her mother left? How can she help her father begin to live again? Where can she find a summer job? What plans should she make for her future? Gradually changes begin in Abi's life. She meets Jude, a cute, self-centred guy who works at the paint shop, has a lovable two-year-old son, Dyl, and a sick mother, and who is interested in Abi. She becomes friends with Horace, the man who drives her bus and has a large model railway set running around his house and yard. She is befriended by Mary Rhodes--whom Abi calls Ernestine--a "Big Sister" volunteer who teaches Abi how to knit. She learns to accept help from Colm who delivers supplies from the food bank. And she gets a summer job with Amanda, cleaning houses for other people. But all these people have problems of their own: Jude has to find someone to care for Dyl when his mother is ill; Horace is lonely; Amanda is trying to save money for university; and Ernestine has a secret from her past that is threatening to catch up with her. All of them, however, help Abi to change and grow, and finally to make some decisions about her life. The ending of the story is realistic but remains somewhat unresolved for young readers who will want to know how Abi's future unfolds. (Perhaps there's another book here.) I also felt there were some unanswered questions from earlier in the novel. Why had Abi's and Dyl's mothers run away? Why had Abi's father and Jude each reacted the way they did? I found this book a very good read for middle teens, but adults will enjoy it, too. The plot is believable and multi-layered; the characters are interesting, each with their own quirks and underlying problems; and the symbolism of the book's setting adds to the completeness of the story.
Donna Gamache is the author of Spruce Woods Adventure (Compascore Manitoba) as well as many short stories for both children and adults.
