Rubber Houses (review)

"Buddy knows pop flies and batting order/ Buddy knows bunting and catcher's signals/ Buddy's not old enough/ to know chemo." But he does, much to the shock and sorrow of his older sister, Kit, who was finishing junior year, looking at maps, and dreaming of the post-graduation getaway until her baseball-mad little brother underwent treatment for cancer and succumbed to the disease after only a few months. A shattered Kit drifts away from her best friend and mechanically attends a bereavement group, observing her family's inability to help one another as they all grieve for Buddy. The free-verse poems that constitute the novel are accessibly styled without becoming overobvious; the focal images of the map, with its attendant possibilities ("Danger is a full tank/ Of gasoline," thinks Kit as she's tempted by the possibility of escaping her wounded family), and of baseball, the game that Buddy and Kit both loved, are effectively employed, and the symbolism of Kit's growing pleasures in literal repair and rebuilding (she starts working at a hardware store and begins volunteer work with a home-building group) isn't lost on Kit herself. This will be a successful four-hankie read for those drawn by the unintimidating text as well as the poetic conceit, making it a useful as well as a genuinely moving title.