I
enjoyed Steve Amsterdam’s award winning apocalyptic, climate change novel Things
We Didn’t See Coming, so I was quick to purchase a copy of What the Family Needed. Calling Things We Didn’t See Coming a novel
might be bit of a misnomer as it is a collection of short novellas. But they all
feature the same character and are told in chronological order. Amsterdam uses
the same technique with What the Family
Needed, but this time each story is told from the viewpoint of a different
character.
What the Family
Needed
begins with teenagers Giordana and Ben arriving at their Aunty Natalie’s house
with their mother Ruth. Once again their mother has deserted her husband. Giordana
is looking forward to the normalcy of her Aunts family’s stable life, but she
has not factored in the fantasies of their son Alek.
Gordiana
feels her mother does not care about her opinion of her father, and that she is
taken for granted by her mother. It’s like she is invisible. While being
entertained by one of Alek’s made-up fantasy games he asks her to choose:
invisibility or flight? She chooses invisibility. Minutes later she wishes she
could sneak down stairs and listen to what her mum is saying about her dad, and
she suddenly becomes invisible.
Ben,
Ruth, Natalie, cousin Sasha, Uncle Peter, and Alek all tell stories of their
own. The stories are in a chronological order so they don’t overlap or show an
incident from a different viewpoint.
Ben’s
story starts a few years after Giordana’s. He is unemployed and full of regret
for marrying and having a baby too young.
He wants to be free. Guess which
super ability he gets.
Ruth
is a nurse who wants to make the lives of her patients and families as
comfortable as possible, if only they would tell her what they really
wanted.
Sasha
has never been able to form a long-term relationship. He would do anything to
get his lover to return his love.
Natalie
is busy, too busy to help and fix her delusional son Alek, if only she was more
efficient.
Peter
just wants his family to stay stable and for nothing to change.
They
each acquire a super ability, but their abilities have mixed results.
The
novel is written in a wry tone. Most readers will identify with the desires of
the characters: wouldn’t it be nice to find out what people are saying when you
are not around, or to flee a boring life, or if nothing ever changed.
The
novel ends with Alek’s story. It is clear from the start of the novel that he
is the catalyst for the gaining of super abilities by his relatives and other
members of his family. I was very keen to find out how and why. Alek’s story offers
surface answers but not the bottom of the iceberg answers I was looking for. I
felt a bit dudded, disappointed.
Things We Didn’t See
Coming
had a sense of urgency about it. It has a demand that we change, and a character that
changes to suit the environment. While What
the Family Needed shows that change can be hard to cope with, even when
magic intervenes. In the end, it says be careful what you wish for because the change
might not be worth it. It is a gentle novel, perhaps too gentle.
