Dirty Little Secrets (review)

Lucy's home may seem a little run-down from the outside, but it's the inside that's the problem. Since her parents' divorce, her mother has given in to a family syndrome: she's a compulsive hoarder. Outside the home, her mother is fully functional as a nurse; at home, however, she forces her children to live in the midst of her mess, without heat or hot water, dependent on a microwave as the kitchen surfaces are all covered with mold and rancid food remains as well as things she's sure she might need someday. When Lucy comes home one day to find her mother dead from an asthma attack, she realizes that the family secret will be out the minute the EMTs show up, and she fears that she will lose both a nascent romance and the tenuous friendships that she has made when people find out how she lives. She tries her best to clear a path to her mother's body, reflecting as she does on the life they have shared, but her final solution, the only solution she has, really, is one that will ensure that her secret remains buried forever. Keeping faith with a teenager's perspective, this compelling portrait of life with a hoarder doesn't offer any sort of psychological explanation or rationale for her mother's behavior, only hinting that it follows a path through families and showing with frank honesty the often brutal lengths a child will go to in order to hide the condition from outsiders. Lucy's seemingly callous response to her mother's death is utterly plausible in light of their history and the self-protective skin she has developed, making her desire for a normal relationship all the more poignant and rendering her actions almost heroic, even if the only life she manages to save is her own.