CBR5 - Jack #4 - The Warmest December, Bernice McFadden

Sometimes I read a book and it's really powerful. It moves me, but I don't like it and I certainly don't not like it, but I can't recommend it to anyone else. This is one of those books.

Bernice McFadden is a very brave writer. She writes the story of a family abused by a violent, drunk father for most of their broken lives. The narrator, Kenzie, unemployed and living on assistance with her mother, has recently discovered that she occasionally forgets that she hates her father. His recent illness having affected her in ways she did not foresee. She finds herself coming to his bedside even though he is unaware, and working through the memories of the havoc he caused in her life.
I knew I was in trouble on page 1. "A speck of dirt...hmm..right there, he said and smashed the hot tip of his cigarette into the soft middle of my eight-year-old palm." Page 1! It is to McFadden's credit that much of the abuse in this book is doled out over time, slowly, so that the reader almost begins to build a tolerance, but not really. It is excruciating. I found myself having to stop reading more than once and I cried a lot in while I was reading.

The book is so well written, I had to keep reading. The violence is tempered by other experiences that give the reader room to breathe. Each of the memories are laid out carefully. They are not chronological, but they are structural. Each one offering explanation of some part of the present you've just glimpsed. Combining to offer an explanation for how this family has become so very, very broken. How the various members thought they offered protection to one another, only to have it make things worse in the long run. Eventually, it seems to suggest that the hate eating away at Kenzie from the inside might in fact be worse than the external abuse suffered at the hands of her parents.

And that's the hardest thing about the book. It does such a good job of telling the story. It succeeds in giving the reader just enough that you can't write off her abusive father. He has his story too. And her mother, she has a story. It just so happens that the combination of their particular stories was so toxic and so ingrained that none of the family could escape. Kenzie the adult is just beginning to understand how those stories lead her here. Is understanding escape? Does having a reason for something make it's outcome any less painful? I don't know. I know I couldn't stop thinking about this book. It hurt to read, and I've not suggested it to anyone I know, but I'm not sorry I read it.