Perfect Little Worlds

Perfect Little Worlds is a story of a family. The family lives in Santa Cruz CA. an area which was hard hit by the 7.1 Loma Prieta Earthquake. The family consists of two sisters, Lucy Mustin and Alice Mustin, and their mother with Alzheimer's . Lucy has come to CA from her home in Portland Oregon to help Alice deal with their mother. Alice creates perfect little worlds in bottles, even as she deals with autism. The two sisters have a lot going on as they cope with the results of the earthquake and their mother's illness. Author Henderson treats her characters with compassion as they deal with life's challenges.

Reviewed by Anja Schindler

A literary gem...

The story begins in 2015 with 79 year old Lucy recounting the events of her life following the death of her younger sister Alice. Her wife died four years previous and her mother died back in 1989, an event which haunts Lucy and one which she feels compelled to recount.

I was fascinated with the contrast between the three major players in this story. Lucy is the narrator and supposed sane one of the bunch. To escape her challenging relationship with her mother she has been living in Portland, baking wedding cakes and living a carefree if scattered life. When her mother's neighbour calls to inform Lucy that she should come home to Santa Cruz she is reluctant to go.

Her mother is suffering from dementia and is being cared for by her sister Alice, a woman who clearly lands somewhere on the aspergers side of the autistic spectrum. Alice is a fascinating character. Her inability to accept change and her need for consistency generates much of the humour in the story. Her life is black and white.Her lack of emotion contrasts with her mother’s kaleidoscope of emotions. Lucy is the sane one, the one with a life, a job and friends. She is also aces at avoiding responsibility, ignoring her mother and sister until she can no longer pretend that everything is fine in Santa Cruz. As if Lucy’s life wasn’t already in a state of flux, an earthquake hits changing the future for every member of the family.

The title of this novel refers to the perfect little worlds Alice creates in bottles as a hobby. These miniature scenes help her to cope, allowing her the control she needs to keep her sanity. How ironic this title is in a world which is far from perfect. I fell in love with these selfish, caring, vulnerable women trying to do the best they can under the circumstances.

Humour mixed with pathos is a powerful and memorable combination. The icebergs and eskimos conversation is one I will take away and hold close to my heart.

Reviewed by Eh Stevens

Seventy-nine-year-old Lucy Mustin needs to write her sister Alice’s obituary but also feels that it’s time to tell their secret, the one they’ve kept 26 years. She remembers the phone call she got from her mother’s neighbour to say that she hadn’t seen neither her sister nor her mother leave the house in weeks and now there’s furniture on the pavement. Lucy calls Alice who informs her that her mother’s Alzheimer’s has gotten worse. Finishing off what she was doing, Lucy makes the 11-hour drive from Portland to Santa Cruz to see for herself. Alice is autistic so while it is a challenge to get information out of her, what she finds on arrival is far worse than she expected.

While the novel starts out in 2015, most of the story is set in October 1989 before and after the Loma Prieta Earthquake but it also dips into other moments of their childhood and adulthood. Lucy describes how their mother, who was Jekyll and Hyde when it came to alcohol, would make Alice watch hours of TV so that she would learn to talk normally. She also talks of the good times with her parents giving insight into the complexity of the parent-child relationship which feeds into having to look after someone who wasn’t always a terribly good parent.

I loved the sisters’ interaction with each other and the constantly changing power dynamics – how they negotiated around diametrically opposed wants and needs, how sometimes it seems like Lucy has all the ease of living but that Alice has all the coping skills. Lucy and Alice are so well-characterised that I found it easy to like and empathise with them. Alice uses language and syntax which is a mash-up of 1950s movies, C3PO and Yoda which gives her an amazing emotional detachment. The same emotional detachment also has Alice coping with whatever is flung at her where Lucy is left floundering.

In spite of this being out of my comfort zone, I could not stop myself from turning the pages. It is not just about relationships and there is a lot of suspense around the earthquake and subsequent events. It is a wonderful read and I was thoroughly engaged...

Reviewed by Joc Adamson