Skinnybones And The Wrinkle Queen (Paperback)

Glen Huser charmed me with Stitches, his book for readers eleven to thirteen years of age. I’m not as taken with this book for young adults thirteen and older, although it’s clear Huser is a talented writer poised to write a novel for adults. There are passages in this novel of mature reflection on music and operatic plot, on relationships, and the painful reality of growing old. They are beautiful, touching, sad, but their overall affect is to present the young reader with a character and sensibility they may not easily relate to, especially when such a sensibility is juxtaposed with that of a much younger character.
Told in two alternating first-person narratives, this is the story of fifteen-year-old Tamara, a tall, thin teen with attitude and typical interest in fashion, and prickly ninety-year-old Miss Barclay, a nursing home resident to whom Tamara is assigned when her class begins to visit the home on a weekly basis. Miss Barclay mourns the loss of her independence and longs for the cultural excursions of her past. She is particularly fond of Wagner, and the thought of missing the upcoming performances of the whole Ring Cycle in Seattle fills her with despair. She smokes cigarettes and imbibes brandy on the sly, breaking nursing home rules. Meanwhile, foster child Tamara is also breaking rules by skipping school with forged sick notes. She uses the time away from classes to watch fashion television as well as to make a trip to an agency, where she learns about a summer modelling course being held in Vancouver. The course is expensive, but beyond that, there’s no way any one-not her foster parents, the Shadbolts, and certainly not her social worker, Mr. Mussbacher-would let an underaged girl with a poor behavioural record make the trip alone.
Both Tamara and Miss Barclay are in the same bind, and both are desperate, desperate enough to turn to one another. It’s the unlikeliest of duos, but working together they manage to convince the Shadbolts and the nursing home staff that Miss Barclay will be spending a couple of weeks at her house, arranging her belongings so that the house can be put up for sale, with Tamara as her hired companion. What they’re actually planning is a course of action that is outrageous, daring, and dangerous, but that will enable both to get what they want: for Miss Barclay, a chance to attend the Ring Cycle in Seattle, and for Tamara, the Vancouver modelling course, paid for by Miss Barclay in exchange for being driven from Edmonton to Seattle and being accompanied to the Opera.
The road trip, with a fifteen-year-old inexperienced driver at the wheel, and an ailing ninety-year-old in constant need of care, is a reckless undertaking-a quixotic trip that somehow echoes the thrilling elements in opera. At the end of the adventure, a furious police officer tells Miss Barclay that she was acting irresponsibly, and that only her frail condition prevents him from arresting her for endangering her own life and Tamara’s. And Tamara, though fortunate to be brought back to Edmonton safe and sound, gets another sobering lesson about the consequences of breaking too many rules. In the end, though, this novel has a happy conclusion-one that is too tidy for me, but that will, I imagine, satisfy younger readers.
Olga Steinj/I> (Books in Canada)