Jesse Bennett’s mother has just attempted suicide. Her befuddled father’s response is to relocate the family to a rundown house in a seaside village for a fresh start. Thus begins Jesse’s thirteenth summer. Hoping to start over as part of the popular crowd in her new school, Jesse befriends the mean girl Trace and her trio of followers, the Debbies. Membership to this group, however, requires Jesse to stand by and watch as a boy is terrorized by homophobic bullies. Jesse learns soon that she must guard two secrets to insure her new status as a popular kid. Trace and the Debbies must never learn of her mother’s mental illness and they must never learn that Jesse may be a lesbian, for she has fallen in love with Traces’ beautiful older sister, Amanda.
Author Elaine Beale heightens dramatic tension by unveiling details that chronicle life with a mentally ill family member in the pre-Prozac 1970’s. We see the blood stained bathtub and the wall plaster that crumbles like broken teeth after Jesse’s mom attacks it with a sledgehammer. However, we escape with Jesse in the stories she writes about Amanda, which she carefully hides in a biscuit tin in the back of her closet. Most who have read Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy may feel a twinge of dread when Jesse decides to move the stories to her school satchel in a misguided attempt at keeping them from being read.
Most of the characters are well developed, with the exception of a hippy English teacher who seems one-dimensional, although the first person point of view might explain this minor irritant. It is easy to excuse a limited perspective of an idolized authority figure by a protagonist who is only thirteen. Librarians may be gleefully appalled by the horrible bookmobile driver who considers Jane Eyre and Sons and Lovers to be pornography. The slang and fashions of the characters are distinctly working-class English circa early 1970’s. These time- and place-specific details though, do not present obstacles for the reader. Rather, they are woven together into a kind of spell that creates a multi-textured world for characters who feel so real as to seem vaguely familiar.
Another Life Altogether is a character-driven coming-of-age tale that utilizes the turbulent natural world of the English seaside to echo the atmosphere of physical and psychological violence in which the characters live. The grey drizzle, crumbling cliffs, and raging sea mirror Jesse’s unspoken fears and powerful desires. It is recommended for young adult and adult fiction collections.
Reviewed by, S. Annelise Adams
Librarian II
Chicago Public Library