LS 5603 One Of Those Hideous Book Where the Mother Dies

Sones, Sonya. One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Adults, 2004.

ISBN: 0-689-85820-5

After her mother dies of an unnamed illness, teenager Ruby is sent to live in Los Angeles with a movie star father she has never met. She is torn away from her best friend and first serious boyfriend. When her father, Whip, greets her at the airport, they are accosted by paparazzi and this sets the tone of the rest of the novel. Ruby really wants to dislike her father. She interprets everything he does as too pushy, too needy. She is only comforted by a frequent dream she has: visiting the zoo as a very young child and being held comfortingly by a faceless/nameless man and e-mailing or phoning her best friend or boyfriend back in Boston. As the novel progress, Ruby come to understand, if not accept, the strangeness that is Los Angeles and welcomes a confidant in the form of her father’s gay assistant, Max, and discovers that her recurring dream really happened; it was her father sneaking time to see her.

Told in free verse poetry, One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies, is about the foundation of family, what makes a family. Ruby is emotionally in tatters and is resentful to be torn away from all she knows in order to live with a father who she only knows through his movies. She resists every effort he makes to comfort her or be a father to her. The book is interspersed with e-mail letters to her friends back home and letters sent to her mother’s deleted account. The use of free verse makes the story easy to read with the episodic entries revealing Ruby’s new life as she reluctantly grows at accept her new reality in Los Angeles. The book ends with a not too shocking revelation of a relationship between her father and Max.

Although the May 1, 2004 issue of Booklist calls it “a satisfying, moving novel that will be a winner for both eager and reluctant readers," it left this reader with the feeling all is well, but somehow unsatisfied because Ruby went from angry/indifference to acceptance in the turn of a few pages. Readers may want try other titles by Sonya Sones if they enjoyed this book, such as What My Mother Doesn’t Know. Other free verse poetry novels are: Impulse by Ellen Hopkins (she also has other free verse poetry titles), Love, Ghost, and Facial Hair by Steven Herrick, and The Geography of Girlhood by Kristen Smith. Readers may also be inspired to write their own free verse after reading this book.