QUAKING
By Kathryn Erskine
Philomel, 2007
Category: Young adult fiction
I met Kathryn Erskine this summer at a retreat, and we traded copies of our respective books. I finally found time to read hers, and the experience was so powerful and so timely that I want to tell the world about it. Or, at least tell the part of the world that happens across my blog now and again.
QUAKING is the story of fourteen-year old Matt (not Mattie, and definitely not Matilda), who has lost both parents to domestic violence and who seems, when we first meet her, as if she might never recover. She is a bitter and closed off young woman, she is mean to the people around her—especially the Quaker parents who take her in—and for a few chapters I didn’t like her at all. But Erskine pulled me in slowly, revealing pieces of Matt at just the right moments, and in just the right doses. By the end of the book, when Matt has to choose between remaining invisible (and safe) and standing up for what she truly believes in, I was completely won over.
The timeliness of the book is tied up in its backdrop: the state of our national psyche in the days, weeks, and months following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Matt’s story will make you remember those times, and it will make you think hard about war and peace and what being patriotic means to you. These questions are woven into Matt’s story, and the result is the best kind of novel: one that makes you think.
Thank you for writing this book, Kathy, and for sharing it with me.