(HarperCollins, $28.99)
This is one of those books that I picked up because it passed the Sarah-Kate Lynch Almost Always Fail-Safe Try Something New Test.
Just look at the cover! Who wouldn’t want to know more about that little freckled face, and why it doesn’t look so happy, and what sort of blue it could have come up from?
Having so easily passed the first stage of the SKLAAFSTSNT, I turned it over and read the blurb: Tillie Harris’ life is in disarray – her husband is away on business, the boxes in her new home aren’t unpacked and although she’s not due for another month, the baby is coming anyway. Enter mention of the father from whom she is estranged and the year her mother disappeared.
Actually, she had me at the name Tillie, but would have passed the blurb stage with flying colours anyway, and the third stage was a shoo-in with “control top pantyhose” appearing in the crucial first paragraph.
Including undergarments isn’t essential in this part of the test, but grabbing my attention is, and Susan Henderson certainly managed it.
This incredibly accomplished debut novel is part mystery, part coming-of-age, and totally enthralling as we are plunged back into 1975, the year that eight-year-old Tillie’s mother started staying in bed crying instead of feeding her kids and cleaning the house.
Tillie’s high-flying air force father has no time for such nonsense and takes desperate measures to get his wife back on her feet, with devastating results.
oy heart broke not just for eccentric outsider Tillie, who still loves her mother to bits, despite the depression that’s crippling them all, but also for her brave little soldier of a brother, Phil, and even for their uptight dad – a man not used to having problems that rules and regulations can’t solve.
Up From The Blue is a haunting portrait of a wounded family and the resulting scars. Highly recommended.
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