Notes from a Liar and her Dog

What is the impact of a mother who is not only emotionally unavailable but who idealizes two of her children (who are ‘like her’) while rejecting the third? One solution for the rejected child is to fantasize about the kind of parents desired and in this perceptive novel, Antonia (known as Ant) writes to her ‘real’ parents asking them to come and take her away from her ‘supposed’ parents.

Ant’s ‘supposed’ mother tries to be nice but Ant always feels ‘all wrong’: ‘I set the table forks first … I write notes on my hand or sometimes my leg. “This isn’t the way people do things,” mom tells me … as if she is the keeper of the right way to do everything.’ And if her mother has problems allowing Ant to be herself, her largely absent father has no idea how much his ‘difficult’ daughter needs him. It is no surprise that Ant cannot stop lying. In letters to her ‘real’ parents, she explains that she cannot entrust the truth to people who wouldn’t understand. This convoluted yet entirely logical take on the world keeps her safe from disappointment – but also excluded from so much else. Thank goodness for Ant’s old and smelly dog, for her best friend, Harrison, and especially for the art teacher who, to Ant’s surprise, likes Ant just as she is. How Ant begins, with help from these friends, to find her own inner resources is told convincingly and with a wit and a lightness of touch that belie the painfulness of her situation. Sadly, there will be many young readers who will identify with Ant.

Choldenko’s outer plot creaks a little – the trouble at the zoo where Ant helps out at the weekends is over the top – but her plotting of Ant’s inner world is splendidly done. With Choldenko, it seems, we have much to look forward to.