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Simon & Schuster, paperback, 9781451656176 (June) |
THE GIRL GIANT
Reviewed by Lisa Sanders
Ruth Brennan is a wonderful character. She is a giant, a girl who grows to enormous height, and her family struggles to cope by pretending all is normal until medical issues finally bring her condition into the open. Much more than a coming-of-age story, Ruth relates her childhood, her relationships with her parents, and their relationship with each other with gentleness, compassion, and insight. Canadian author Kristen den Hartog spent years creating Ruth, doing research and reading about gigantism and those who have suffered from the disease. The result is a beautifully written book about family, relationships, and accepting who we are in relation to the people we love. Ruth's story is inextricable from the story of her parents. Her mother, Elspeth, was a young woman when she lost her family in World War II, victims of the Blitz. She retains a vague sense of guilt that she wasn't with them when it happened, influencing her to become an overly attentive, worried mother. James, Ruth's easygoing father, still can't believe that Elspeth agreed to marry him, an unhandsome soldier in Canadian uniform who wandered into her family's hat shop. He loves her fervently and tries to understand and make happy his homesick and emotionally distant bride. Their story is one of love and heartache. Ruth relates the story of her birth and normal infancy with a perspicacity that suggests a precocious and active mind. By the age of four, her parents become increasingly aware of Ruth's unusual growth rate. It becomes difficult to keep the little girl clothed, as she outgrows things so quickly, but the doctor reassures them that all is well. Elspeth wants to believe him and talks James out of a second opinion. As Ruth gets older she encounters all the social problems of a child who is different. Sensitive and artistic, she retreats into herself, and it is only when a girl moves in next door who seems to accept her that Ruth finds the friendship she craves. Gradually disappointment tears at the little family from many directions, with each member in their own cocoon of unhappiness despite their love for one another. When an accident occurs, it brings them together, unveils the reality of Ruth's condition, and allows them to forgive with greater self-understanding. In addition to being a beguiling story, The Girl Giant is beautifully written with a dreamy, poetic feel to it. My favorite passage describes Ruth when she is four:
My rubber boots were the size of a seven-year-old's, but I loved how they took me through
puddles to the shores of a distant land. There were trees that talked, and flowers that grew
taller than me, and roads of yellow brick as in the Land of Oz. This was a place I escaped
to again and again, and I wished, sometimes, that I could take Elspeth with me, but when I
tried to imagine her there I saw her as she had become in her ordinary world, with her worried
expression, her whispered prayers that came on suddenly and filled me with fear. I knew (though
the guilt from it ached in me) that the place would wither upon her arrival. No, I didn't want
her in my secret land.
I might have overlooked this little gem, citing a lukewarm attitude toward coming-of-age
stories or a wariness of fictional protagonists with rare medical conditions. I was saved
from my assumptions by being asked to review the book, and I was impressed with its quiet
charm. Kristen den Hartog, together with her sister, Tracy Kasaboski, has written another
book, The Occupied Garden: A Family Memoir of War-torn Holland. I'm looking forward to
reading it. |