Shortlisted for the 2021 Silver Birch Fiction Award, this middle-grade novel moves along quickly with a wide variety of well-developed characters. Its perspective on the challenges of being a sibling of a mentally-challenged child (the sense that he draws more attention from your parents than you, that you are but shouldn’t be embarrassed by him, that it’s difficult to forge an identity apart from him) is fresh and important, thoughtful and engaging. The fact that the author herself was in that situation gives depth to what is a carefully constructed novel.
That being said, it’s also fun, with punchy dialogue and true-to-life annoying and/or bullying characters. The eleven-year-old protagonist is utterly believable, as are all his classmates. Only two aspects made me scratch my head, and perhaps lowered the power of the novel by a titch: the inclusion of a character who is mentioned regularly throughout as if he were important to the story, and yet doesn’t physically show up until nearly the end of the novel. (That didn’t really work for me.) And the final two paragraphs, in which the protagonist reflects on what he has learned as a result of his experiences -- as if he needs to spell out his own character arc in case the reader didn’t “get it” through the story itself.
On the whole, a superb novel in concept and execution.

- P.W.