Grief Girl: My True Story (review)

Everything changes for fourteen-year-old Erin one night: a speeding truck hits her jaywalking parents, killing her mother instantly, disabling her father, and leaving Erin and her three-year-old brother, Trent, in the care of their older sister, Tracy, who's only a few days short of eighteen; a month later, their father succumbs to complications, orphaning the three sibs. In this memoir, author Vincent relates her youthful experience of stunning tragedy in novelistic present tense, documenting the long stretches of depression that left her with no interest in washing or changing clothes, the rarity of true support from friends or family (in fact, Erin's uncle turns out to have embezzled funds from both her parents' estate and the legal settlement the kids received), and the bitter loneliness of a home where the person who should have been her closest ally, Tracy, is cold and angry. This is understandably paced more like a journal than a novel, with elements occasionally appearing, as they do in life, without developing into any particular story (we never hear again about the tragedy that kills Tracy's boyfriend's sister, or about Erin's hideous perm); it's also realistic that Erin really can't see beyond her own suffering, giving her the self-centeredness of the grief-stricken. Vincent's capable writing adds dimension to the account, shaping and shading Erin's anguish so that it's readable and not just raw, and the sheer practical difficulty of eking out a living in this kind of makeshift family is vividly conveyed. Teens with fantasies of sudden independence will find this fascinating and soberingly eye-opening.