Unhooking the Moon by Gregory Hughes (review)

After the sudden death of their father, twelve-year-old Bob and his little sister, Marie Claire (known as the Rat) decide to leave their beloved Winnipeg and head to New York, home of the uncle they’ve never met but who they’re sure will take them in. A journey via bike, freight car, and a lift from an affable cigar smuggler gets them to Manhattan, where they meet an assortment of colorful characters, ranging from Tommy the hustler to Ice the famous rap artist, all of whom who are smitten with the Rat’s unique creativity and audacity. Bob worries about his sister’s periodic and unexplained seizures, but he has greater fears when she’s apprehended by the police and put into a facility run by child abusers. The story is a mix of wild and realistic, old-school and contemporary; there’s a touch of Dickens in the gallery of quirky characters, while the absurdity with serious emotion underneath suggests Jack Gantos’ work. Hughes gives Bob’s narration a lively, plainspoken vigor (“Anybody who hit our dad was a goddamn pedophile. And that’s all there was to it”) while keeping his reactivity a useful complement to the Rat’s leadership. The pacing, however, is way too slow for a plot this far-fetched, and most characterization is either overdrawn or flatly generic (including obligatory racial identifiers). Too many of the plot implausibilities—repeated notes of child murder and rape, and Rat’s final medically vague incapacitation—have a somberness that’s at odds with the picaresque flair, undercutting both the emotional truth and the adventurous zest. Sloan’s Counting by Sevens (BCCB 9/13) is a much better story of an unusual displaced child who changes the lives of those around her, but the high-spirited escapade may appeal to readers who like old-fashioned adventure with a touch of modern darkness.