The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker
October 12, 2017
Hostess: Susan
Attendees: Lori, Amy, Janna, Cheryl, Michelle
We gave this book a high rating: 5 (or is that a 6?!)
Summary book Review from the Toronto Star:
You’ve never met anyone like Ari Appleton. Feisty, bright young heroines forced to deal with devastating family circumstances have long made for memorable characters in Canadian fiction, from Anne Shirley of Green Gables fame to Yolanda in Miriam Toews’ All My Puny Sorrows.
But Ari Appleton will take your breath away.
In Heather Tucker’s astonishingly exquisite debut novel, The Clay Girl, we meet Ari in the 1960s as a quirky eight-year-old, the youngest of six sisters who are being split up and farmed out to relatives around eastern Canada. The girls are escaping horrific dysfunction: their abusive father has blown his head off, and their skanky, addicted mother can’t look after herself, let alone six kids. (Did I mention this is not a children’s book?)
At first, Ari lucks out. She’s sent to loving aunts in Cape Breton who tell her she’s not dirt, as she’s always been told, but clay, which is malleable and full of possibilities. Clay soaks up water, they tell her, just as bright little Ari soaks up everything in her path. “And with a little added grit, but not too much, the clay becomes stronger.”
But the grit piles up when Ari’s mother, now living in Toronto, regains custody. Over the next eight years Ari deals with an increasingly chaotic and violent home life while forging outside relationships with teachers and others who recognize her astounding creativity and burning intelligence. To counter loss after loss, she keeps close an imaginary sea-horse totem named Jasper, a refuge of stillness and balance in her life where none exists. Heading toward her 16th birthday, Ari realizes that escaping her hellish home life is more fraught than she thought.
The Clay Girl leads us into very dark places, but Ari keeps herself — and us — from despair by being funny without being naive, edgy without being cynical. Author Tucker’s prose is as lyrical and powerful as the ocean, Ari’s voice as sure and strong as a rudder through wild seas.
Tucker, of Ajax, has clearly drawn on her experiences as a psychiatric nurse and bereavement counsellor who has worked in Africa, South America and Northern Ontario. Her rare gift of showing us beauty, hope and humour amid profound trauma make The Clay Girl an extraordinary debut novel.
Marcia Kaye is a frequent contributor to the Star’s book pages.
Next Book: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
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