My Review: One of the things I have enjoyed about listening to the podcast by Kirkus Reviews, “Fully Booked,” is that that they feature books that are from a wide variety of points of view from around the world—diverse authors, books that address experiences that are not common or if they are common, are not always addressed, etc. The Weight of a Thousand Feathers is just such a book. The story features an older teenage boy who is the caregiver to his mother who is struggling with advanced MS. He is also the caregiver of his younger brother. As with many sad and progressive illnesses such as MS, the situation is not going to get any better. We know the outcome. It is inevitable. How it comes about and how soon is, of course, the unknown, but the outcome is not unknown.
I thought this book was really well-done. It was really
sad, of course, but it was also hopeful and inspiring. I am constantly struck
by people in very difficult situations and their resilience and selflessness.
This is obviously such a book, as the situation warrants difficult discussions
and hard topics to read about and discuss. I thought the author did a great job
of creating a realistic-feeling situation where a young man would be faced with
very difficult but very real situations in the face of being a caregiver, with
equal parts of responsibility and also resentment and also love. It’s a strange
dichotomy, of course, being a caregiver, and it is magnified when the caregiver
is a minor and is taking care of his mother and his little brother.
I appreciated this book because it made the care-giving
feel all-encompassing, as I’m assuming it would be, especially for a boy as
young as this. It would be a burden and yet, this boy was still faced with
normal teenager-like situations: school, friends, love interests, the future.
The author was able to create a rich environment that felt both stifling but
also really normal for a boy, which would be the dichotomy of being a teenage
caregiver.
There were only a few characters in this book that were
well-developed, but I think that that helped create the illusion of a closed-in
world, such as it would feel if you were a primary caregiver to an ailing
parent. You would know a few people and trust a few people, and everyone else
would just be kind of peripheral as you tried to deal with your own reality.
There wasn’t space and emotional energy for anyone else. I didn’t miss having
other well-developed characters. I felt like the ones we knew were in equal proportion
to their importance in the life of the main characters.
The most difficult situation, of course, was when the
mother asked her son to help her end her life. (This is not a spoiler; this is
on the description of the book, FYI). What goes through the mind and thoughts
of both sons was hard to read and yet relatable. These situations are never easy,
are they? Nothing seems cut and dry when faced with the situation these boys
were facing. It certainly complicates everything. There is much dialogue in
regard to this, and I feel like the author did a good job of helping the reader
understand the impossibility of the issue and yet the obviousness of the answer.
I found this to be a powerful, enlightening, and emotional
book. I think that older teens would benefit from reading it. It’s really scary
because of a dying parent, but it would create a great degree of empathy in
helping the reader understand that we don’t always know what others are going
through, and that being kind and understanding and giving people a chance is
very important. I feel like my young teen would have a hard time with some of
the content, both emotionally and just maturity-wise.
My Rating: 4 stars
For the sensitive
reader: There is discussion of sex, same-sex attraction and some same-sex love
scenes, as well as drugs, language, and the dying and death of a parent. I
wouldn’t let my young teen read this, although I do think that older high
schoolers could benefit from it.