{"id":1496,"date":"2012-05-31T06:49:46","date_gmt":"2012-05-31T06:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=1496"},"modified":"2012-10-22T17:14:50","modified_gmt":"2012-10-22T17:14:50","slug":"ramshackle-by-elizabeth-reeder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=1496","title":{"rendered":"Ramshackle by Elizabeth Reeder"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Freight Books 23 April 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

176pp, paperback, \u00a38.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m flunking history. I\u2019ve got a pyromaniac lab partner. I\u2019m officially no longer a virgin.\u2019<\/p>\n

So far, so normal in the life of fifteen-year-old Chicago schoolgirl Roe (like the deer) Davis \u2013 except for one thing: her father Peter, who saw her safely to bed on Friday night, was gone by Saturday morning and hasn\u2019t been seen since. Given into Peter\u2019s care by her mother when she was a baby, Roe may now be truly and wholly abandoned.<\/p>\n

Ramshackle<\/em>, the first novel by Chicago-born, now Scotland-based writer Elizabeth Reeder, keeps the facts \u2013 and the emotions \u2013 stark in this clipped yet affecting account of eleven days in the life of Roe. While Peter\u2019s family \u2013 sisterly aunt Linden, distracted by her impending art exhibition and her lovers, and \u2018asshole\u2019 uncle Duncan \u2013 offer the aid they can, Roe is often alone with her problems. And she has plenty to deal with \u2013 her best friend\u2019s abusive father; a punitive teacher; a rift with her boyfriend Quiz.<\/p>\n

Reeder creates a physical landscape that is neatly – at times excessively so – matched to Roe\u2019s predicament. It\u2019s winter in Chicago: the raw cold is relentless and penetrating. Next door, the Morse house \u2013 a decaying but lovely piece of domestic architecture which Peter helped build and which holds secrets and stories \u2013 stands between Roe and a ravine. When it is demolished, Roe is left precariously close to the precipice. Peter\u2019s work as a locksmith means his home and shop are full of keys, locks, mysterious boxes and enigmatic pieces of intricate machinery. But Peter has taught Roe how to pick locks. He has not left her unequipped.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Decent fathers and responsible mothers are in short supply in this simple but piercing mystery. Reeder\u2019s tendency towards the literal is offset by the depth of Roe\u2019s predicament and the\u00a0profound notes sounded in its final chapters. As the fate of the Morse house indicates, not all battles are won \u2013 one of several hard lessons Roe must learn during her rite of passage.<\/p>\n

Unflinching on the subject of loss, tender in its depiction of the watershed between childhood trust and self-reliance, Ramshackle<\/em> is a quiet novel with a small canvas, but one which dodges predictability to deliver an emotional punch. Quiet landscapes may be deemed unfashionable in current publishing terms, but they too can touch the heart and Reeder succeeds in doing just that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/p>\n

It\u2019s winter in Chicago: the raw cold is relentless and penetrating. Next door, the Morse house \u2013 a decaying but lovely piece of domestic architecture which Peter helped build and which holds secrets and stories \u2013 stands between Roe and a ravine. When it is demolished, Roe is left precariously close to the precipice. Peter\u2019s work as a locksmith means his home and shop are full of keys, locks, mysterious boxes and enigmatic pieces of intricate machinery. But Peter has taught Roe how to pick locks. He has not left her unequipped.[…] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1496"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2906,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions\/2906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}