On The Fence by Kasie West

On The Fence is a poignant coming-of-age story about a girl growing into womanhood  who struggles to remember the mother she misses and to unravel her deepening feelings for the boy next door.

Charlotte (Charlie)Reynolds is sixteen years old and lives with her policeman father and her three brothers, Jerom, Nathan and Gage. Her neighbour, Braden Lewis is almost always at her home so he too is like a fourth brother to Charlie. Charlie is tomboy, keen about sports and involved in running, soccer and basketball and roughhousing with her brothers. Her mother died when she was six and Charlie has few precious memories of her. Now a teenager, Charlie finds she misses having a mother around to guide her through the ins and outs of dating, boys and makeup.

When Charlie acquires a second speeding ticket, her dad insists she get a job to pay him back for the tickets and as insurance against any future tickets. Charlie doesn't want to work, but with the help of her brother Gage, she manages to get hired on by Linda who owns a clothing store, Linda's Bazaar. Linda is an earthy woman whose motherly concern for Charlie manifests itself in helping Charlie purchase suitable clothing for working in the boutique. Charlie has to wear something other than her typical t-shirt, jeans and beat up sneakers.

Lately the nightmares about her mother have returned and when she can't sleep, Charlie decides to go sit out in the backyard by the fence. For the past four years, Charlie has found that running before bed made her tired enough to sleep through the night, helping to avoid the recurring nightmares. But lately running hasn't worked. One night in her backyard she witnesses Braden's father coming home drunk, yelling at Braden and his mom. Upset at what she's witnessed, Charlie talks to Braden through their shared fence. Soon they find themselves meeting frequently in the middle of the night, Charlie on her side of the fence, Braden on his side. They talk about Braden's family problems and Charlie's life. Charlie challenges Braden to a game to see who knows more about the other.

Meanwhile Charlie begins to enjoy her job at Linda's. She finds Linda to be a kind manager who encourages her. However, when Linda makes a general remark about Charlie's mother, instead of telling Linda that her mother died, Charlie acts as though her mother is still alive. This little lie unsettles Charlie, but she's tired of being pitied when people ask. When a girl drops off ads for make up demos at the store, Linda suggests that Charlie sign up to be a makeup model. Charlie agrees to do this, forging her dead mother's signature on the permission paper. Unable to sleep after doing this, Charlie meets Braden at the fence in the middle of the night confessing her guilt over what she's done in a sort of general way.

The make up demo goes well, with Amber doing basic makeup of Charlie's face. Amber's friendly and chatty, which makes the session pass easily. Charlie who was dreading the session because she is completely out of her league when it comes to girly things, finds it not quite so bad. When she discovers how much money she can make from just one session Charlie agrees to do a second one.

Gradually Charlie begins to realize that she's falling in love with Braden, but he doesn't seem to reciprocate her feelings. Charlie can't stop the way she feels but she knows she has to. "I needed to stop the way my body was reacting to Braden lately. We were friends. Too close to ever want to explore these stupid new reactions and risk losing him forever."

Charlie meets a new guy, Evan, when she's out with Amber and her friends after the second make-up session. When Evan, who in Charlie's eyes is "hot and nice" learns she is heavily involved in sports, he invites her to come with him to see an Oakland Athletics baseball game. It's supposed to be a double date but Charlie knows she can't invite Braden because Amber and her new guy, Dustin will likely come with them.

Things between Charlie and Braden become strained when one night Charlie thinks he's going to tell her that he has feelings for her but instead Braden tells her that he wanted to talk about something very different. Embarrassed and humiliated Charlie leaves. "Of course, Braden didn't like me like that. I was his buddy, his pal, his sister. A burly girl who played sports. The only way a guy would ever like me was with a thick layer of makeup."

This seems to make things easier for Charlie to date Evan because she assumes that Braden simply views her as one of the guys and not a girl who could be a potential girlfriend/date. But when Braden fills in for Amber's date who falls ill, his behaviour seems to suggest that he is jealous. Evan doesn't know Charlie very well but assumes she is like other girls, clueless about sports, especially baseball and into nice clothes and makeup. Braden tells Charlie that he's not the right person for her since she can't be herself around him. Charlie knows she's faking it but maybe this is what she has to do to get a guy interested. These mixed feelings make it hard for Charlie to cope with having Braden around and she wonders how do you stay friends with someone you've fallen for?

Discussion  

On The Fence is a sweet story that touches on the themes of identity, honesty and first love, all of which are interconnected. Charlie has always been seen as "one of the guys" but she begins to wonder if that means guys aren't attracted to her. Does she have to change who she is to get a date and should she? She becomes aware of this when she goes to Woodward Park to play disc golf with her brothers and they find a girl's lost Frisbee with her contact information on it. While her older brother Jerom thinks it's "hot" that a girl plays disc golf, Gage says, " 'I don't know. A girl who plays disc golf? She's probably a dog. Some aggressive, burly thing.' The guys laughed...Maybe that's how they saw me. Maybe that's how most guys saw me."

Later on as Charlie begins dating Evan she feels that she must be a different kind of girl than who she is - one who wears makeup and different clothing, who doesn't know about baseball and definitely someone who doesn't play tackle football with the guys. When Braden sees Charlie behaving differently around Evan he tells her "If you can't be yourself around him, then you shouldn't be dating him." But Charlie challenges Braden, asking him how many of the guys they know have raced to ask her out. "If they want someone to date, they go to the mall or the club and find a girl who wears tight clothes and does her nails and giggles at their jokes.... Guys don't want a competitor, they want a cheerleader." Seeing Charlie sitting out a tackle football game, Braden again reminds her, "You don't have to change for a guy," telling her that by compromising, she isn't showing Evan the real Charlie.

Charlie's dishonesty with Evan is mirrored in her other relationships with Linda whom she lied to about her mother. Charlie's struggle to find her own identity and to accept it comes to a head when her lies to Linda are revealed, causing Linda disappointment and hurt and bringing down the wrath of her father.  Charlie feels guilt because she knows Linda understands her and is able to help her understand herself and she recognizes she needs someone like this in her life as the men around her cannot provide this much needed insight. Charlie reveals to her father why she lied about her mother's death and asks  him to explain what happened to her mother. She learns that her father and brothers were trying to protect her from the truth of her mother's death, but in doing so they prevented Charlie from coming to terms with her death and healing.

By the end of the novel, Charlie comes to a sort of self-acceptance which allows her to tell both Evan and Braden the truth. She also accepts that her athleticism is a good thing but that she also might want to be open to stepping out of her comfort zone and using a bit of makeup for special occasions. Things like makeup and nice dresses don't make her anything less than who she is. They don't take away her identity.

Charlie is a believable character, and West does a great job filling in her character as the story progresses. Like many sixteen-year-old girls, she's just figuring herself out, what her strengths are, how to navigate the world of boys and relationships, how to deal with uncomfortable conversations and coming to terms with a family tragedy that happened ten years earlier. She is also realistic in that many girls drop out of sports in their teen years because they believe this makes them unattractive to boys. Fortunately, this view is beginning to change. 

On The Fence is a gentle romance and coming of age story that will appeal to many readers. Kasie West has placed another great read on the bookshelf.

Book Details:
On The Fence by Kasie West
New York: HarperCollins Children's Books    2014
293 pp.

Serendipity and Me by Judith Roth

Serendipity and Me is a sweet, touching novel in verse that tells the story of a young girl and her father trying to cope with an unimaginable loss. 

Sara who is in Grade 6, lives in Central California with her father who is a college professor. Her mother passed away three years earlier as a result of a car accident. The story opens with Sara rehearsing for a play that her class will put on the following Saturday. She is Wendy and a boy she is crushing on, Garrett, has the role of Peter Pan. However, four days before the performance, Sara becomes very ill. When it becomes apparent that she will not recover in time, the part is given to another classmate. This is devastating to Sara.

While her father works at the college across the street, Sara who is home sick is cared for by a neighbour, Mrs. Whittier, and also one of her father's students, a young woman named Jocelyn. Despite Sara not knowing her, she tells Jocelyn about losing her part in the play, how much she misses mother and how sad her father has become over the loss of his wife. When Jocelyn sees all the cat pictures in Sara's room, she asks why Sara doesn't have a cat. Sara tells her that her father has repeatedly refused her a cat. But Sara desperately wants a cat because a cat will give her something warm and soft to love again.

Then on the Saturday of the play, when Sara is at her lowest, knowing the play is going ahead without her, someone rings the doorbell and leaves a little white kitten on her doorstep. Her father is adamant that the kitten will not stay. Sara manages to convince her father to let her keep the kitten until the morning and then for a week, by lying to him about her best friend Taylor's mom considering taking the cat. Sara has one week to try to convince her father that what she really needs and wants is this little soft kitten.

I think --
         No is not a fair word
         when you're a kid
         without a mother
         and you need something soft
         to hold on to.

The following week Sara returns to school and tries to find ways to change her father's mind about the kitten. But Sara also tries to get her father to open up about her mother. Every time she broaches the subject her father retreats. When Sara has to bring a picture of her family into school for an assignment, she cannot find one of her with both her parents. This leads her to hunt for a box of pictures that she knows her father has saved and when she finds it, the pictures in the box  provide some clues about her mother, but also lead to more questions. Sara knows she needs to confront her father about her mother and why she can't keep the lost kitten.

Her father, seeing that Sara is beginning to want to know about her mother and their family,  gives her a book that Sara's mother gave him when they first met years ago. The book is copy of poems by Sara Teasdale which her mother, Aislinn, gave to Sara's father, when they were in college. This combined with a box of pictures that Sara finds and a CD her mother made of her telling Sara a bedtime fairytale, help Sara to learn more about her mother and to begin to deal with her grief. But her father's resolution of his grief seems impossible. And it appears more and more that his unwillingness to have a cat in the house is tied to the loss of Sara's mother. Will Sara ever get her father to confront his grief and allow her to express her own?

Discussion  

Serendipity and Me is a short novel that explores the themes of loss and grief. Sara and her father are grieving over the loss of her mother. 

Roth's poetry is simple yet expressive, conveying a young girls deep loss of her mother and her father's intense loneliness and grief. Sara's father's grief is so intense that he cannot talk about it. However a little white kitten named Serendipity brings father and daughter together to talk about a person they both loved and lost. The poems are free verse and tell the story from Sara's point of view. Sara discovers that her mother loved poetry and also wrote poems and so this leads Sara to try her hand at poetry too.

While the basic storyline is sad, Roth incorporates a hint of a blossoming crush between Sara and Garrett. She also demonstrates how acts of kindness on the part of neighbours and classmates can go a long way to comforting those who are going through a difficult time in their life. Despite the tragedy Sara and her father have experienced and the difficulties they have faced, the novel ends with a hopeful, positive tone.

This beautiful story makes an excellent choice for a Mother-Daughter book club.

Book Details:
Serendipity and Me by Judith Roth
New York: Viking Press 2013
312 pp.