A Million Things
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4.4 • 25 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“An original and impressively assured debut. A gem of a novel.”
—Graeme Simsion, New York Times bestselling author of The Rosie Project
A soaring, heartfelt debut following fifty-five days in the life of ten-year-old Rae, who must look after herself and her dog when her mother disappears.
For as long as Rae can remember, it's been her and Mum, and their dog, Splinter; a small, deliberately unremarkable, family. They have their walks, their cooking routines, their home. Sometimes Mum disappears for a while to clear her head but Rae is okay with this because Mum always comes back.
So, when Rae wakes to Splinter's nose in her face, the back door open, and no Mum, she does as she’s always done and carries on. She tends to the house, goes to school, walks Splinter, and minds her own business—all the while pushing down the truth she isn't ready to face.
That is, until her grumpy, lonely neighbor Lettie—with her own secrets and sadness—falls one night and needs Rae's help. As the two begin to rely on each other, Rae's anxiety intensifies as she wonders what will happen to her when her mother's absence is finally noticed and her fragile world bursts open.
A Million Things transforms a gut-wrenching story of abandonment and what it's like to grow up in a house that doesn't feel safe into an astonishing portrait of resilience, mental health, and the families we make and how they make us in return.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Spurr delivers a haunting account of a young girl grappling with abandonment in this excellent debut. Rae, a 10-year-old living just outside Melbourne, Australia, alone with her dog Splinter, attempts to hide that her depressive mother has hanged herself in the garden shed. To ease the loneliness, Rae narrates her inner thoughts to the specter of her mother. Distracting from her grief, Rae counts the days and compulsively keeps herself occupied with school and a list of tasks to maintain her home and the image of a normal child. Her routine is interrupted by the elderly Lettie, a hoarder living next door with her own painful past who spends her days watching the girl's coming and goings. Rae reluctantly befriends the old woman and concocts schemes for them both in order to keep social services at bay. When a nosy neighborhood boy and his mother uproot her plans after a month and half of living alone, Rae must confront her circumstances: "most of your life is just memories, some of them not even that clear. And it's just a house that reminds you what it felt like when you thought it was a home. You don't realize how ephemeral it is." Through Rae's devastating yet hopeful interior dialogue, Spurr delicately illustrates the complexity of loss and isolation. Fans of Liane Moriarty should take a look.
