The People We Keep by Allison Larkin

Amy       

Lynnie   

 

contemporary fiction

Sixteen year old April is barely surviving on the meager attention from her father. She’s basically living alone, neglected, in an un-mobile home and has decided she won’t go to school any more. When her father destroys her guitar, her one source of joy, April decides anywhere is better than home. She takes off without a plan and strikes out for a new city. Meanwhile, there are a few people back home who genuinely care about her and worry about her safety.

 

Amy's Review

April’s situation was, sadly, believable. She was a smart, savvy girl (even though her school grades didn’t reflect that fact) and did a pretty good job landing on her feet (barely) time and again between the hurdles.  Having a mother who abandoned her and a neglectful father, April learned to feel that she was unwanted and didn’t belong anywhere. And after she left home, whenever she would finally find people with whom she was comfortable, something would happen to make her feel like she needed to run away for their sake. Her story was often heartbreaking. She felt that she was a burden to others.

I couldn’t help caring about her and rooting for her to land somewhere safe. While her new vagabond life was not really better than her old life, at least it was of her own making and she was making the effort to find happiness. Thankfully, April seemed to have several fortunate breaks that kept her out of the worst kinds of dangers. I kept hoping nothing disastrous would happen to her. She had a difficult life with few bright spots. Those bright spots were cherished lifelines until she decided that she needed to leave, never allowing herself to put down roots. 

I’ll admit that I was loving The People We Keep until it started to annoy me about 2/3 of the way through the novel. I know that the constant struggles were realistic and that April was young and emotionally stunted. It’s not that I felt the story became unbelievable. It’s just that I got a little tired of reading about all tough times. I mean, I’m sure it was Allison Larkin’s intent to show the difficult truth of the runaway life, especially for someone with April’s upbringing, but I eventually lost patience with April's lack of realization that she could and should stop running. Thankfully, the ending was hopeful (despite April’s actions) and not the disaster I feared. 

 

Lynnie's Review

 

I know so many people who love The People We Keep, and I liked it, but it also made me desperately sad. Talking to a few people, it seems your feelings about Allison Larkin's book may be determined by your own childhood; those who had comfortable childhoods may love it more than those who didn’t.

April is a most sympathetic character - a child whose mother is gone and whose father can’t even be bothered to neglect her. She’s been, effectively, on her own for years by the time we meet her at 16. For a young woman who has been on her own for so long, I found April to be shockingly naive without a lot of necessary street smarts. It’s only through luck that she doesn’t face scarier situations as she tries to find her way through the world.

Most of the situations she put herself in simply made me terribly sad. I struggled with most of the relationships April created and while I understood April’s desperate need to be loved, it was hard to watch her make the same mistakes over and over not understanding that she would never have a good relationship when it’s based on a lie.