2020 EDIT: 'My Sister Lives On The Mantelpiece' is as heartbreaking, touching, and real as ever. It is one of the best depictions of grief and sorrow that I have ever read about. It will crush you, yet bring you joy and sweet release by reminding you of the remaining good things in life - all in a single reading day.
I'd forgotten just how useless, pathetic, and frankly repulsive the adults in this book are. They get off too easy, I think. I mean, wow. It's like adulthood comes with selective amnesia, so that they forget what their own childhood and schooldays were like, which is the only reasonable explanation for why they're awful with kids. They're as bad as school bullies because they let so much happen and miss the bloody obvious, right under their noses. Nothing can excuse them being clueless and unhelpful. All of them are infuriatingly self-centred and stupid.
At least the book is honest about what a lot of adults are actually like.
'My Sister Lives On The Mantelpiece' - it will make you cry, and appreciate so much.
Everyone needs love, and care, and family and friends to be there for them. This applies to both children and adults.
Take care.
Final Score: 5/5
P.S. Sunya being described as a superhero by our young narrator Jamie - and she calls herself Girl M - is one of the brightest spots in the book (on an already bright star of a character), and one of the most understated, yet revolutionary. This was published in 2011, and only a few years later we would see Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, the first mainstream Muslim superhero. She's as popular and inspirational as she was in her introduction. There are things in this world to be positive about, still. Cheers for Sunya and Kamala, the Muslim heroes.
Original Review:
One of the most poignant, simply delightful and scarily-true-to-life books I've ever read, hands down. Words cannot do justice how good 'My Sister Lives On The Mantelpiece' is. It is sweet and bittersweet - both elements that work together beautifully - and a real tear-jerker without feeling fake or manipulative.
I don't know how Annabel Pitcher managed to write with a voice of a ten-year-old boy in a broken family, and in her debut novel at that, but she did it. And my word she did it well.
So realistic it's almost frightening, with colourful and deeply flawed characters involved in a tragedy that happened five years prior to the events of the book. Jamie, the ten-year-old narrator, is sympathetic because you understand why he would not really care for his dead sister, whom he barely remembers and yet on occasion is forced to say he misses and loves her by his grief-stricken dad. A lot of pressure is put on this innocent child. He is honest to us though. In fact he cares more for his cat Roger than anything else at home. His love and eventual outgrowing of 'Spider-Man' is also adorable.
His mum is a truly horrible human being for abandoning her still-living children for another man from a terrorism-affected group centre. But I can see someone doing this. Grief affects people in different ways. In extreme cases like the one in this story the pain never goes away. Nothing gets better in time. It consumes an individual so much that they may forget who they are and what's really important in the present. This still doesn't excuse Mum of course; she's a tragic person in her own way, and maybe it's a good thing that she doesn't appear in the novel much.
Dad is an alcoholic who looks after the two children he has, but he is so preoccupied with his daughter Rose and her ashes that he hardly ever gets up for work in the morning. Because of the tragedy that took his daughter, he is racist towards Muslims and to any person with a dark skin tone. He is also implied to be homophobic at one point. Here is a character who stays in one place and refuses to move on. Even after he moves his family away from London, he still cannot let go of the past and his guilt over whether he could have prevented Rose from getting killed on that day.
Jas is a wonderful big sister to Jamie - she is the only family member in his life who actually tries to help him, and she thinks about his feelings, in spite of her own grief over losing her twin sister Rose in the most horrific way imaginable. Spunky, rebellious and aware of her dad's misgivings, I loved her more and more as I read on.
And there's Sunya, Jamie's only friend at his new school, who is also great for a ten-year-old. Her relationship with Jamie is sweet and adorable with plenty of believable ups and downs. The part where Jamie stands up for her when she is viciously bullied by the racist shits at school is a crowd-cheerer in of itself.
I also have to add that the chapters featuring Jamie in class took me back to my own Year 5 days; with the similarity of the lessons, the BS "gold stars" system, the pupils and the teachers. Pitcher knows her stuff alright. Nostalgia: another reason why 'My Sister Lives On The Mantelpiece' affected me so much in a heart-wrenching way.
Memories, bullying, dealing with loss, looking out for others, friendship, letting go of the past, and realising how important your life is because there are people who love you - these are the major themes in 'My Sister Lives On The Mantelpiece'. And the short story at the end, 'Jasmine', is just as achingly beautiful, and made me love Jas even more.
I cannot recommend this enough. Perfect length, perfect writing, perfect distinguishable characters. It's practically perfect in every way.
Final Score: 5/5
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