14 Jul 2013 11:24:43
When we first encounter seven-year-old Edward, hero of Blood Family, her superb new novel for young adults, he has no idea what a family is. For he and his mother are prisoners of Bryce Harris, a drunken and violent abuser. Over several years Harris has beaten Edward's mother into catatonic dependence, while Edward is treated with emotional contempt and physical neglect, being made to sleep on the floor of their squalid flat and never going outside.
This dreadful state of affairs is brought to an end when social services are tipped off by a neighbour. Edward and his mother are rescued and embark on their journey through the system – Edward into foster care and eventual adoption, his mentally ill mother into hospital and then a long-term care home. To begin with it looks as if the boy is going to make it: he's damaged, but bright and lively, and responds to decent treatment like a flower to the sun's warmth.
But his progress is brought to a crashing halt in his early teens when he discovers that Harris is his biological father. This raises a tough question, one implicit in the novel's title: is your destiny dependent on your family background? If Harris's blood runs through Edward's veins, does that mean he is doomed to follow the same path? For Edward, the idea is too awful to contemplate, and he escapes into drugs and alcohol.
That leads to the sort of bad behaviour guaranteed to make you unpopular with your adoptive family and teachers. Of course, the real problem for someone like Edward is his sense of worthlessness – and the more he alienates those who are trying to help him, the more worthless he feels. Edward's downward spiral takes him to a point of total self-abasement, a moment when he looks in the mirror and sees that he is on the road to becoming the beast he has been attempting to escape.
In the hands of a lesser writer this could all be very worthy, especially with its multiple-viewpoint format, each character telling their part of Edward's story in the first person. But these are Anne Fine characters, human beings in all their spiky individuality, and most of them are flawed in one way or another. Edward's adoptive parents and sister are particularly well drawn, and come across as loving but imperfect people doing their best in impossible circumstances.
It's Edward's voice that really hits the spot, though. He might not have the same basso profundo growl as the Man in Black, but throughout the novel I was reminded of my favourite Johnny Cash track, his cover of Nick Lowe's "The Beast in Me". It's a song about "learning to live with pain" that is deeply serious, but at the same time has a deliciously light touch – a trick only the best artists with genuine insight into the human condition can pull off. Anne Fine is definitely among their company.
