10 Things I Can See From Here

Reviewed by: Jeri Fitzpatrick - GNGMS, Gray, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: May 26, 2017

Review

If you buy one book this year you want this book for your gay lesbian section. Maeve suffers from anxiety, her motto FREAK OUT, Calm down, REPEAT. The humor, drama, real life situations are spot on. Maeve tends to run evil statistics of all the things that could go wrong at any given moment. I learned things that I didn't know. I knew about rainbows, but I didn't know about the phrase, "Are you a friend of Drothy's", and that it has been around since the 50's. I knew about the posters with the crown and the "KEEP CALM" logo, but not hat the British government made them during WWII. The humor: One chapter is called Raymond's penis. It describes her first meeting with her mom's boyfriend whom she didn't know was spending the night. He got up early to make mom some coffee, and wasn't expecting to meet Maeve in the living room....He dove behind the kitchen island...and she couldn't lose the image of old man...Before then the only penises she had seen were her little six year old twin brothers and her Dad's. His was with the stepmom's home delivery in a water tub. Maeve's mom is going to Haiti with Raymond for six months and Maeve will have to go stay with her Dad and family in Canada. Dad's drinking and taking drugs again. He get's kicked out of the home. Step mom is due to deliver a new baby, and wants to have it at home. Maeve has a new girl friend who play the violin in parks. And yes, she gets to deliver the baby and it is kind of traffic. Maeve had a bad experience with her best friend. " The ten things you can see from here" is her girlfriend's ideas of ways to get her to focus when she is starting to have an attack. So the book has sex, babies, drugs, and alcohol, definitely for mature audiences.

Overall Book Score: excellent