The realities of life can come crashing down on the most gullible and noble of human beings, and can make or break even the toughest of souls. It’s the way we choose to learn, or cope, in the aftermath that brings out our true colours. It’s how we act upon these tragedies and hardship that defines us. Are we mice—unsuspecting, yielding, obliging, shy, submissive—or are we powerful, assertive, and courageous lions?
A real page-turner, Mice will keep you at the edge of your seat, flipping maniacally at the pages while also appreciating the realism of the author’s literary style and the characters’ evolution.
In the reality of Gordon Reece’s debut Mice, Shelly, a pubescent teenager, and her mother move to a remote and desolate cottage in the country to absolve themselves from the hardships and memories of their past. A brutal divorce leaves Shelly’s mother scrambling to meet meager ends for a daughter who silently suffers from her father’s abandonment. Shelly, on the other hand, is eager to run away from school bullying that leaves her scarred emotionally and physically.
Moving away to Honeysuckle Cottage, Shelly and her mother start to follow a comfortably numbing routine, which excludes the outer world, much like the expanse of trees and forestry around their little nest. That is, until the night of her sixteenth birthday when Shelly awakes to a disturbance in her haven of solitude; someone had broken in.
Being mice by choice, Shelly and her mother will be propelled into a series of chilling events, proving they have to be anything but mice to survive.
Reece succeeds in describing a submissive relationship that many women and men have to live with and proves that humans, no matter their shortcomings, will and can fight for what’s theirs when they need to. Even the most dangerous of experiences, no matter the bruises and burns, bring out the courage within the most cowardly of mice.
Although the book starts with a detailed recounting of the misfortunes that Shelly and her mother had to go through up until the point of their moving to Honeysuckle Cottage, Reece develops the characters into palpable and relatable people who we know from our lives away from literature.
Reece depicts a strong relationship between a mother and daughter that rings so true, that at times it is often difficult to think that a man had managed successfully to carve the secret intimacy and friendship between mother and child. Focusing solely on the characters and their turmoil, Reece allows the reader to let his or her mind wander and imagine the events subjectively.
Gripping and at times addictive, Mice is a literary pioneer in the emerging realm of young adult literature, which seeks to empower its characters by propelling them into difficult situations.
By Azza El Masri
