Stay Well Soon (Penny Tangey, UQP)

Horse-mad Stevie is 11 years old and lives with her perpetually dieting mother and older brother Rhys, who, for the first time in his life, has turned down a potato cake (or ‘scallop’, for readers in NSW). Dad Ben is working in far-away Toowoomba. Mum says this is ‘better for her headspace’, but Stevie misses Ben, especially as things start to go wrong. The spurned potato cake is the first hint that Rhys is seriously unwell. Stevie is dragged along on a round of doctor visits and tests, and then is dumped by friend-since-prep Charlotte, who has taken up with the new girl—April has a real horse, not just the yearned-for ‘Atta Girl’ who exists in Stevie’s imagined future. Stevie’s only weapon is to remain desperately jaunty, parroting the cruel justifications of others to hide her disappointment. Yet to find her own voice and often horribly selfish, she is not a loveable heroine. Stevie could be the edgy younger sister of Catherine from the author’s YA novel Loving Richard Feynman. Penny Tangey is a comedian and comedy writer as well as a novelist, and the depiction of Stevie is witty, but it is a bone dry wit without a drop of sentiment. Stevie’s tilt at life’s hard lessons is intended for middle primary-aged children, but older readers might enjoy (or wince at) an oddly familiar formative self.

Kerry White is author of Australian Children’s Books: A Bibliography (MUP) and is the major contributor to the online children’s books resource, The Source