Daily Book Excerpt: YA books:
Next book on the shelf is The Keeping Days
The series starts in 1900 – and the last book in the series takes place in the early 1920s. It’s the story of a sprawling argumentative funny family who live in Everytown, America. Or whatever. The Sterling family. The heroine of the book is a sensitive girl who wants to be a writer (yawn) and her name is Tish Sterling. Tish can be kind of a drip – HOWEVER, all of the characters around her (her parents, her best friend, the boy at school she likes, her siblings) are all fascinating – It’s the kind of thing where the narrator of the book is not halfway as interesting as the supporting cast – but that’s kind of cool, because Tish is a limited person, she’s “sensitive”, she holds grudges, she’s over-dramatic about things … but you somehow don’t get TOO annoyed because it’s so fun hanging out with all the OTHER people in her life.
This is the first book in the series. Tish has just turned 14. She has an older sister Bronwyn – who is beautiful, and trying to decide who to marry. They used to be close, as sisters – but now Bronwyn seems to be moving into another world. Tish wants to be considered a grown-up, or at least MORE grown-up. (Seeing as she acts like a bratty little poet half the time, I think she has a ways to go – but that’s beside the point). Tish’s mother is a great character – she has 5 kids – and in the beginning of the book, the parents announce to the family that they are going to have another baby. It is CLEAR (from this adult woman’s eyes) that this pregnancy was not planned – Mrs. Sterling is obviously in her early 40s. So it’s kind of a stressful situation – and in the middle of that, the father loses his job. Tish and her mother have a very prickly relationship – the mother is very HARD, shall we say. She has no patience with Tish’s sensitivity, and has a way of trampling all over any poetic moments. Some of the best moments in the book, though, come when you see beneath that hard surface. Terrific characte.r You love her.
I can’t remember exactly what happens – but somehow, the parents have a huge blow-up – which terrifies all the kids in the family -Mrs. Sterling is kind of a nag, truth be told, and the father finally has had it. He goes to his sister’s house next door, and stays there. This sends the family into a complete tizzy. Divorce is not really even thinkable … but still, it’s very scary for everyone. And Mrs. Sterling is hard as nails, pregnant at 40, and she won’t give in.
The following excerpt is from a family meeting in the middle of this crisis. Tish goes next door late at night, and summons her father to come back – and make up with his wife.
I think Norma Johnston is really good at dialogue – especially big huge group discussions. Every character has their own distinctive voice, and it really feels real to me. I love this series. Anyone out there who has a tween daughter, or a teen daughter – this series would be great to introduce her to!!
If you read this as an adult – you might scoff at some of the sentiment. You’re missing the point if you do. Look at how Norma Johnston, at the end of the excerpt, brings in the complexity. It doesn’t end on a happily ever after note – because life is more complex than that. Growing up is hard. It’s a mixed bag. These books are all about that. They’re gems.
From The Keeping Days
In Aunt Kate’s yard I paused to reconnoiter. All was dark and silent except where one light burned. I climbed precariously up the trellis and succeeded in throwing a handful of pebbles through the open window. After the second handful, Pa’s startled face appeared beside me.
“Tish! What are you …”
“Hush, Pa! Pa, come outside, please! I’ve got to talk to you.”
Pa looked at me. “I’ll be out directly. Now get off that trellis before you break your neck.”
I waited under the rose arbor, hands clenched tightly, until Pa stepped cautiously out on the back stoop. LIke me, he had pulled clothes hastily over his nightgown. “Tish, is anyone sick?”
“No, I just had to talk.”
Pa tucked my hand through his arm and we walked into Vyse Avenue, spectral in the moonlight.
“How are things going?” Pa asked presently.
“Not good.” Unaccountably my teeth started chattering and then the dam burst. “Oh, Pa, we’ve tried to fill your place, but all of us put together can’t do it. The – center’s gone out of things. I never appreciated before how much you give us.”
Pa gave a short laugh. “I’m afraid your mother doesn’t think so.”
“She will. Maybe she does already. If you’ll just come home with me now and talk to her.”
“It’s not that simple, Tish.” Pa sounded infinitely old. “A man needs to feel he’s respected as a human being, that his wife sees him, all of him, not just the weaknesses he knows about already.”
“Since when did you ever teach us anything had to be simple or easy!” The words burst out before I knew they were coming, and they hit Pa, I could see they did. I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, I thought. “You always told us it took the really big person to make the first move. Can’t you do that now, even if it does mean eating the Sterling pride?”
Pa looked at me, and I was afraid I’d gone too far. Then his shoulders sagged. “Out of the mouths of babes,” he said. “All right, Tish. You win. Let’s go home.”
I didn’t like the price of victory if it made Pa look like that. But I didn’t dare think about that now. There were bigger obstacles ahead. My heart pounded harder than ever as we went up the kitchen steps.
Mama was in the kitchen, obviously in the middle of a row with Bron. When she saw Pa, she flushed and jerked her head away, pulling her wrapper tight together at the throat. Pa closed the door and leaned against it, waiting. Bron and Ben and I lookeda t each other and wondered where to start. It wasn’t as exciting as we once had thought, having the leadership depend on us.
Finally Ben cleared his throat. “Let’s — go into the dining room,” he said. That was where we always sat for formal conferences. Pa led the way, but instead of going to the head he drew a side chair out, looked pointedly at Mama, and waited. Mama sniffed and flounced into it with poor grace. Pa, deliberately, sat down across from her. Ben looked at Bron and me, then stepped to Pa’s usual place at the table’s head.
“All right,” Mama said ominously. “We’re waiting.”
“That’s what we’re doing,” Ben said quietly. “Waiting for you two to act like grown-ups instead of what you’re always calling us – spoiled kids.”
I would have applauded if I hadn’t been so scared.
“We’re not a family any more,” Bron said. “We need you back.”
“Glad you recognize that,” Mama retorted. But the wind had been taken out of her sails, as all could see.
“We’re to blame, too.” I looked at my mother’s rigid face, then down at my hands. “We’ve taken for granted that you’d always be around for us. We’ve never thought of you as having needs.”
There was silence, and I knew Mama was caught in the crossfire of her two favorite speeches, the one about Families Should Always Be There For Each Other, and the one on Children Should Consider Parents’ Feelings. Part of me enjoyed the paradox, but the rest of me had a very empty feeling.
Pa coughed. “I appreciate your perception, Tish. But it’s natural for children to take parents for granted. They need the security of being able to.”
“Maybe that’s true at Missy’s age, or Peter’s,” Bron said earnestly. Peter looked aggrieved at being lumped with Missy, but Marnie nodded.
“Where do parents get the idea we’ve got to see them as gods? We ought to — to be able to respect each other as human beings. Definitely,” she added darkly, “what we need around here is more respect. For all of us.”
“Even when we’re being pains. Like not doing things that embarrass each other – or not picking on things we’re ashamed about already. And trust in each other’s good intentions, even when they don’t work out.” I remembered my orgy of self-pity the night of my birthday party. “More concern for others, and less over whether they hurt us.”
“Glad you’re finally realizing it,” Mama spoke in a raspy echo of her usual tartness.
“We’re talking to you, too, Mama,” Bron retorted.
Before Mama could answer, Ben’s voice sliced in, clean and sharp. “I guess what we’re saying is we don’t need little tin gods. Or caretakers. But is it too much to ask for human beings who practice what they preach about understanding and respect, instead of getting wrapped up in their own stubborn pride? Because how in tarnation can you two expect us to act like adults when you don’t yourselves?”
His words fell like a weighted rock, and in the little hush of shock that followed, he thrust his legs out and his chin forward in a replica of Pa’s own gesture. Mama’s breath came back to her in a rush, and for the first time she looked straight at Pa. “See what happens when a father lets his children run wild. Outrageous for them to talk that way to their parents.”
“Shut up, Evie,” Pa ordered, not taking his eyes from Ben.
Mama gasped. “How dare you — tarnation, look at me!”
“Why?” Pa asked. “How long has it been since you’ve looked at us, Evie, or listened to us either? If you had, you might have noticed it’s your own highhandedness pushed me out of taking a hand with the children.”
“If you’d been here more, instead of traipsing around from court to court …”
“That traipsing around, Evie,” Pa said evenly, “was in the interest of keeping a roof over your head. Or haven’t you noticed that the city’s administration’s changed? I guess you’ve forgotten my job’s a political appointment. And maybe it hasn’t occurred to you that it’s hard for a man in his mid-forties to find another job. Tish is right, you are insensitive.”
I wanted to sink through the floor. But Mama was too shocked and angry to notice me. “How’s a woman to know a man has worries if he shuts her out like she’s just a hired housekeeper? And makes her feel she’s not a very good one at that? How can she feel like standing behind him when he doesn’t stand behind her? If every time she needs a word of tenderness what she hears instead is, ‘Tarnation, woman, why can’t you iron my shirts as well as Kate?’ I’m tired of ironing!” Mama’s eyes were very black. “I’m tired of trying to keep my house as neat as a single woman’s who’s got no children muddying it up as soon as she’s got something done. I’m tired of trying to keep your son from burning the house down around our ears, and one of your daughters from running wild. I’m just plain tired! And as for my dragging around the house like a sick cat, Mr. Sterling –” She took a deep breath and her chin jerked a mile high. “I wouldn’t be that way if I wasn’t, at my age, carrying another child of yours when I don’t know how to cope with the ones I have already!”
In the hush Pa’s voice went on like a low scratched gramophone record. “And another thing. After twenty years a man gets tired of hearing his wife call him ‘Mr. Sterling’ as if they’d only just been introduced.”
“Oh, Edward,” Mama whispered, staring at him, and started to cry. I saw Pa move toward her. Bron rose quickly.
“We’ll make coffee.” She steered us firmyl toward the kitchen, all but Missy who had fallen asleep with her head on the table. The door swung shut behind us. I felt queer and shaky, as if I were starting to get better from a long siege of the grippe. Mama was going to have a baby, and Pa might lose his job, but the important thing was that we were back to being a family again.
Only it wasn’t quite the same way it had been before. I could feel this in my marrow much later, when we had finally taken the coffee tray, with the brew long since boiled thick and bitter, into the dining room and were sitting a whole family once again, in our accustomed places. We had never felt so awkward with each other, and yet so close.
We talked for a long while, quite quietly and calmly – about Pa’s job, and money, and the new baby, and being a family. For the first time, I realized, Pa and Mama were really talking to us as if we were grown-up. I’d wanted that for a long while, and it was queer that I should find myself almost envying Missy, who huddled sleepily in Mama’s lap and didn’t understand a word of what was going on.
What always pissed me off was how Tish was always so difficult – she could never just go with the flow. I also never forgave her for skipping her father’s (granfathers?) funeral. Get over yourself, Tish! Just because Bronwyn is the pretty one doesn’t mean you have to be an attention-seeking brat!
hahahahaha totally!!! Oooh, Tish is so sensitive, she’s a writer, she likes poetry … GROW UP.
The poets always grow up, folks. The rest of the world beats them black and blue, and either they grow into madness, or into the sad, sick songwriters that give everyone else what they want. Tish is young and foolish, and has a lot of growing to do – but did anyone read “Glory in the Flower”, the second book, when she is playing Juliet in R&J, and her family mocks her pretensions where she can overhear them? She goes onstage, delivers a performance to burn the hair from their heads, and then has to be dragged back from the edge of bitterness by her grandfather, the same grandfather whose funeral she eventually refuses to attend. If that is growing up, let me remain eternally fourteen (and heaven only knows, I haven’t been fourteen since people wore bell-bottoms!).
“Folks”? Yeah, I’ve read all her books. Which you would know if you had read more of my site.
You gotta watch out the mansplaining. It’s a horrible rhetorical device.
Everyone grieves in their own way. Young as she was, Tish wasn’t ready to say goodbye to someone who’d been so important to her. Going to the funeral would have been more than she was able to take at the moment, especially after all the other emotion she’d been through recently. Cut her some slack, folks; she was only a kid, after all.