Help Me Jacques Cousteau by Gil Adamson

Help Me Jacques Cousteau

Gil Adamson

A tender description of the confusion experienced by a growing child as her safe family environment implodes around her. Hazel watches her parents' marriage fail but can do nothing about it; she seeks comfort from her grandparents, her brother, her uncles and aunts and her friends but they cannot help either, as they cannot stop what is happening. This is a story of a dysfunctional, maddening, slightly insane family in the throes of collapse.

Extract
This isn't the only wedding we've attended lately. There was the one in the fall - me in my horrible pink dress, which barely fits me now I'm fifteen, and Andrew in his oversized powder-blue suit. Heather, a friend of my mother's, was getting married for the second time, this time to a Scottish guy with an accent so thick he must have stepped right off the hillside and onto a plane bound for Canada. The church was unheated, unadorned grey stone with a huge oak altar at the front and a life-sized oak cross beyond. It put you in mind of a cold storage room.
Parallels
  • The Laments by George Hagen
  • The Incredible Adam Spark by Alan Bissett
  • Spilt Milk by Kopano Matlwa