I'm
not going to lie to you. This is a disturbing book. Then again, Deborah Ellis
has never been shy to take on difficult topics.
It
starts out innocently enough. Clare, our narrator, begins by telling us that
she died and came back as a cat. Then she proceeds to say that something
happened a few days ago that she can't stop thinking about.
Initially,
Clare was a thirteen year old girl who lived in Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania. She was hit by a truck, and after a period of darkness, woke
up in the body of a cat in Bethlehem, Israel. After being chased by a group of other cats she ended up in a one room house with two young Israeli soldiers and one
younger palestinian boy.
Clare
as a cat, watches and takes part in the scenario taking place in the West Bank.
Throughout this she reminisces about her life as that girl back in the United
States. In her last year of school Clare ended up with a teacher, Ms. Sealand,
whom she couldn't trick or manipulate. Ms. Sealand caught Clare numerous times
behaving cruely to other classmates and adults, which lead to many detentions.
For detention, Ms Sealand had students copy out, by hand, the poem, Desiderata.
This poem plays a significant part in knitting Clare's past and present life
together.
Through
Clare, the cat, we get to know more about these two young soldiers and the
young Palestinian boy. They are complex characters who appear to be caught up in
circumstances beyond their ken. While the young boy says little, he crafts a
miniature city out of recycled materials, and when he is worried or afraid, he
rocks and recites the Desiderata.
I'm
thankful that Ellis portrayed so much humanity in all of these
characters.
Tension
mounts when the soldiers are discovered; first by the boy's teacher and
classmates who have come to see why he didn't come to school, then by rock
throwing boys and eventually, the Israeli army.
To
be honest, I thought Clare was a self centered, nasty character then, and is
marginally less noxious in her life as a cat. There is something
sociopathic about her in both of her incarnations. At the same time as tiny
glimmers of humanity emerge as intimations of guilt, she also takes pleasure in
making other people around her miserable.
Somewhere
in the middle of this read I anticipated that Clare would have her eyes opened
and end up with an aha moment whereupon she would wake in a coma back in a
hospital in America a changed person.
I
was wrong.
I
suppose Clare does manage to transform a bit. I won't tell you how she does it,
but suffice to say, she actually does something good for others. This ending
takes us back to the beginning where she states, "I can't stop thinking
about it, and I'm not used to thinking very much about things."
I
feel like I need to have another read of this book. It is a superb
representation of what it must be like to live in the world of the West Bank,
but there is more about Clare's character that I think I might be missing - her
stubborn recalcitrance is perhaps symbolic of people trapped in that seemingly
never ending struggle. Perhaps her eventual questioning and wondering reflect
optimism for some kind of Peace in the Middle East. I sure hope so.
