One of the best local novels to come my way
for some time. (Review by Margaret von Klemperer, courtesy of The Witness)
I sometimes think that being mildly OCD
(the initials stand for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is part of being alive –
we all have our peculiar little rituals that get us through the day. But when
the condition gets out of control, it can be devastating for the sufferer and
for those around him. Rather than an aid to coping, it inhibits it entirely.
In Máire Fisher’s fascinating and powerful
novel, the sufferer is Noah Groome, an adolescent whose mild OCD becomes
catastrophic after he and his mother are hijacked. It makes it impossible for
him to function at school, drives his buttoned-up, successful father to fury
and fills his mother with guilt. Only his younger sister Maddie seems able to
help him.
Then, pushed over the edge by the school
bully, he retaliates and the school insists he be sent to Greenhills, a
residential facility dealing with troubled teens. Noah feels perpetually
threatened by “the Dark”, which can only be kept at bay by his rituals, and at
the beginning of his time at Greenhills, neither one-on-one sessions with a
therapist, nor working with a group seem to help. But there is also Juliet,
another inmate and former schoolmate of Noah’s. She has an alcoholic mother and
an abusive father, but she is also a noisy, disruptive treatment for the
reclusive Noah – in many ways his first real friend.
Meanwhile, running parallel to Noah’s story
is that of Gabriel, another troubled child whose horrific past sees him growing
up in a children’s home, completely separated from the rest of his family.
If all this sounds deeply depressing, don’t
worry. Fisher controls her narrative with a steady hand, creating characters
the reader can care about, and offers a leavening of humour, both in the
society she depicts and in the goings-on at Greenhills. Towards the end, as the
parallel stories converge in their alternating chapters, Noah, Juliet and
Maddie’s activities take on the pace of a thriller, reaching a deeply
satisfying conclusion.
Fisher’s exploration of mental conditions
and their effects on both sufferers and their families makes for a strangely
moving story. One of the best local novels to come my way for some time.
The
Enumerations is published by Umuzi - Penguin/Random
House. ISBN 9781415209646. - Margaret von Klemperer
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