The title alone makes it clear that Grief Girl is not your typical young adult novel. Fourteen-year-old Erin Vincent isn’t struggling with boyfriend problems or school exams like her friends. Instead she’s trying to cope with the sudden death of her parents and the ensuing grief that overwhelms her.Grief Girl is Vincent’s account of her parents’ death in an accident whilst on a daytrip to visit her grandmother’s grave. Young Erin along with her older sister and baby brother are orphaned and left to fend for themselves when relatives and family friends practically abandon any responsibility for the siblings soon after the funerals.
Vincent’s writing is brutally honest; she doesn’t sanitise or gloss over any part of her what she went through. Having lost my mother at a young age I am grateful to Vincent for sharing her experience with such integrity and I only wish I’d had a book like Grief Girl to read when I was a teenager.
I identified strongly with so much of Vincent’s story including the feeling of being responsible for her parents’ deaths, the disconnectedness from other people, the fridge full of mysterious casseroles. But you don’t need to have experienced grief at a young age to appreciate this book; it has something to offer all readers.
For Erin death of a loved one isn’t something you get over so much as get through. Her tale is one of survival, just getting from one day to the next; it’s not about putting on a brave face and living happily ever after. Erin’s relationship with her sister Tracy comes under pressure due partly to the fact that Tracy is thrust into a parenting role she is ill-prepared for as well as the fact that the sisters each deal so differently with their grief.
Grief Girl is a moving and important memoir that would sit perfectly on a secondary school reading list. In telling her story Vincent sheds the light of real-life experience on the commonly eschewed subjects of death and grieving. Highly recommended.
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