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With her multiple-award-winning, bestselling, and critically acclaimed novel The Outlander, Gil Adamson established herself as one of North America's preeminent fiction writers. But ten years before The Outlander Adamson published another book of fiction with a small press, and writers, readers, and critics immediately sat up and took note. With this new updated edition, Adamson’s fascinating portrait of a young woman’s coming of age is ready for readers once again. Help Me, Jacques Cousteau presents the life and times of Hazel, who is born into an extraordinary family alongside her brother Andrew. Hazel’s experiences, at once odd and completely believable, involve a diverse cast of family members who share only one thing: a penchant for eccentric behavior. In portraying a strange, compelling, dysfunctional family, Adamson demonstrates her powerful prose style, uniquely combining a scientist’s loving attention to detail, a comic’s unerring delivery, and a poet’s sublime ear.
I saw this book when wandering through a local bookstore. I was talking with someone on how people select books and how much a cover matters to buyers. Passing by countless books with uninspiring covers I saw this book. While the cover isn't the greatest it did have Jacques Cousteau in the title. What person my age didn't watch his shows growing up. We had actually seen him grow too old and then tell his son to do the hard work as he spoke his broken English to fill out the shows.
So I pick up the book and read the back and little review blurbs and still wasn't quite sure. I sit down and read a few pages and figure out it is light reading but Gil Adamson's style seems to lose me at first. The stories run together in descriptions of her eccentric family. They move from person to person as though we should already know them. After about 50 pages you know the characters or her family better but I wonder where the story is headed. Then I figure out that the book is strictly a story of her life and her oddball family. From the time you figure out the book, it flies. You look for the next story and how that person intertwined with her life. You realize that deep down the story is kind of sad since everyone concentrates on their life but is that really any different than most people today.
In the end the book is quite a read. The book moves fast from her brother's birth until he becomes an older teen. Showing how the family has its own problems and how they deal with all the normal every day events and how Hazel sees all of these items and either takes them in or drowns them out. I highly recommend it for someone with a spare afternoon to read and then ultimately reflect on their own situation. I bet everyone has a couple of Hazel's family in their own.
Overview
With her multiple-award-winning, bestselling, and critically acclaimed novel The Outlander, Gil Adamson established herself as one of North America's preeminent fiction writers. But ten years before The Outlander Adamson published another book of fiction with a small press, and writers, readers, and critics immediately sat up and took note. With this new updated edition, Adamson’s fascinating portrait of a young woman’s coming of age is ready for readers once again. Help Me, Jacques Cousteau presents the life and...