Living with Dead People

Living with Dead People
A harrowing read! A brilliant memoir! The story is told by a child narrator in chronological order mostly with the linear sequence of childhood events.
Beginning with Chapter 1 the reader learns that the narrator is eight years old the same age of Sara Keeler who died in a bicycle accident. The narrator becomes obsessed with wanting to know the details of Sara Keeler’s death and her life. The narrator bribes her older brother Jamie to read all the gory details to her because her father won’t answer her questions.
The development of the narrative continues chronologically marking major childhood events and her traumatic memories. The author moves the story with sentences mostly at the beginning of chapters. Grounding the reader to stay focused as they begin to witness harrowing scenes of the narrator’s childhood:
p. 44 “The night before I started fourth grade, I couldn’t sleep…”
p. 103 “For the most of my friends, summer vacation was something they wished would never end.”
p. 117 “She secretly decided to establish a career for herself and finally divorce the bastard. When she was twenty…”
p. 137 “One morning the summer before my sophomore year, Mom woke Becky and me”
p. 179 “During the fall of my senior year, I went to …”
p. 197 “I was eighteen when I walked into the theater at Kenyon College for my freshman audition.”
As a reader I am never lost in the story. I believe the narrator and I want to see the narrator survive. I find the narrator’s description of her town eerie foreshadowing the plot of the story:
“I decided Kyle was just too green to understand the seriousness of cancer or to be aware that children could be killed for no reason at all. People in Galesburg didn’t know what mattered and what didn’t. Real life, exciting life, happened in Elk Grove, not out here in Hick Town, where there was only one blinker light and no courthouse.” (p. 33-34). The “no courthouse” in her town echoing in the prologue when the narrator concludes her feelings and thoughts about her father: “Dad destroyed all of us … He lives without consequences.” (p. 323).

Holloway is successful at keeping her reader grounded by writing in linear style. Her syntax and dialogue throughout the book is written in plain, direct and simple language. The plot thickens as the reader witnesses the brutality and neglect of the parents unfolding as the narrator matures. The character details of her father, mother and siblings are well developed and slowly presented to the reader.
For example, in the scene when the father is racing the school bus, the reader learns that her father is always mad, an adrenal junkie and seems to want to kill someone:
“This was where, almost every day, Dad’s truck would appear behind the bus. Without fail, he’d speed up, and despite the stop sign sticking out from the left side of the bus and alternation flashing red lights, he’d pass us on the two-lane road. And here he came again.
Dad was gunning for someone, maybe even Liddy, who couldn’t afford socks and wore the same skirt almost every day. I was convinced he was going to kill someone, either a kid crossing the road to get on the bus or a person in the car waiting for the bus to move on. He was homicidal—especially in his truck.
The way I saw it, Dad was just mad. He drove mad, he ate mad, and if anything turned happy, he ruined it.” (p. 36).
The theme of helplessness and vulnerability are presented throughout the book. The reader learns that the narrator and her siblings are at risk at every turn. Their own lives are at risk when the father is behind the wheel. Her father and mother keep loaded guns, the father’s reckless driving, the father’s impulse to destroy and to humiliate his children at any given moment and the mother’s complete neglect and abandonment – these themes are working in each chapter, but the themes are uncovered slowly and deliberately so even though I was brought to tears—the story doesn’t overwhelm or shock the reader with gory details.
The contrast between the narrator’s character and her parents is striking: “I didn’t care about guns. I cared about recreating The Sound of Music in our backyard.” (p. 34).
The reader cares about the narrator and wants the narrator and her siblings to make it. There are several gut-wrenching themes unfolding in the book: Suicide, Incest, Jamie’s alcoholism, Becky’s denial and Joanne in and out of the psych wards.
The vulnerability of the children making it out alive after being raised by two "dead" parents was horrifying, and the odds were stacked up against them. Throughout the narrative the narrator wanted to find the physical evidence. But, the children didn't have physical evidence on their bodies that they were being neglected or abused:
"I wished there had been obvious signs of destruction on all of us kids: bruises or burn marks, something that indicated how violent how house was, but words and neglect don't leave marks. And that confuses even the person who knows better.” (p. 169). This theme of wanting evidence of the violence that was done by the father continues when the narration shifts to Joann’s story. “Cutting is complicated and I don’t really understand it, but I know that I needed to feel alive and also be in control of something. That’s how numb I felt. It’s crazy.” (p. 280).
In summary, I thought the narrator was extremely brave and was relieved that her and her sister, Joanne made it out alive.