Anika's Coming-of-Age

            Jason’s parents are so unaware of what is happening in his life. Throughout the book, they are constantly fighting with each other and their fighting eventually ends in a divorce. But they are so wrapped up in their problems that they have no idea what is going on in Jason’s life and they never seem to make an effort to find out. For example, they have no idea that Jason likes to write poetry and that he sends it to the parish magazine every week to be published. When Dean Moran falls through the window during their spooks adventure, his parents just assume that Jason and Dean were goofing off. They also know nothing about what is going on with Jason at school. Jason endures some extremely severe bullying that makes his life a living hell. He is tormented everyday by his classmates led by Ross Wilcox. They make fun of his stutter, put mice in his pencil case, stick notes to his back, physically abuse him, and pretty...

Throughout Housekeeping , Sylvie seems pretty nonchalant about everything. She spends her days wandering through Fingerbone doing whatever she wants. Ruth and Lucille are horrified when they see her walking out along the rain tracks over the water but Sylvie does not even seem to understand why they are so upset. When she catches Ruth and Lucille skipping school, she could not care less. She even offers to write them a note to get them out of school. There is one day where Ruth and Lucille are exploring in the forest and they decide to spend the night because it is getting too dark to walk all the way back to their house. They haven’t told Sylvie they are staying overnight because it wasn’t planned and as they walk back to their house the next morning, Lucille remarks that Sylvie is going to be so mad. Yet, when they get back to the house, it’s as though Sylvie barely noticed that they were gone. Even when Lucille moves out of the house to live with her home economics teacher, Sylvie...