Ms. Hen reviews Our Little World

 

Our Little World

Karen Winn

Dutton

2022

Ms. Hen decided to read the novel because she won it as a prize! She went to a Zoom meeting that was the annual book party for the National Writers Union of Boston, and she won the trivia contest. She got to pick one book that an author read, and she picked this because it was the only novel. Ms. Hen prefers novels most of the time.

This book is about two sisters, Borka and Audrina, growing up in 1985 suburban New Jersey. Borka, or Bee, as she prefers to be called, is the narrator, and she is jealous of her younger sister, because she is beautiful and popular. A family moves in across the street, with a boy Bee's age, Max Baker, and a four year old girl, Sally. They become friends.

The children and Mrs. Baker go to the lake, and Sally disappears. They police scour the lake and the woods, and she isn't found. Both Bee and Audrina are devastated, they don't know how to handle it. They both adored Sally. Max and his family are crushed. When Bee goes back to school she becomes popular because she is associated with Sally. Bee enjoys her life for a short time, albiet for a price. The next school year, things are different for Bee.

Ms. Hen thinks this novel is a wonderful example of writing through the eyes of children, which is something as a writer she does not do often. In order to write like a child, an author has to get into their mind, and think like one, with their fears and anxieties and childlike obsessions. Bee is a great character because she is realistic, she has a small view of the world, like a child should. She thinks mostly of herself and her problems, and doesn't understand life yet.

Even though Ms. Hen was interested in the story and the relationship between the sisters, she found some inconsistencies in the research. Ms. Hen was the exact age that Bee was in 1985, so she remembers that era. The term "playdate" was not used in the Eighties, but it is used in this novel. Two boys meeting Bee were both wearing North Face jackets, and nobody wore those in the Eighties. Also, Mrs. Baker smokes cigarettes, and the girls think that is strange, but most women smoked in the Eighties, so it wouldn't have been unusual. Ms. Hen thinks the author might not have been old enough to remember these facts, but Ms. Hen does, because she is a hen who remembers.

Ms. Hen liked this novel. It is not the kind of book she has been reading lately, but it's nice, a heartwarming story, one that's about family, and the complexities of love within a family. Life happens, and we have to keep going on.