If It Weren't for Sebastian

Sebastian

by Jean Ure

Maggie Easter hopes her friend Sebastian has not carried out his suicide threat when the cat that brought them together disappears and Sebastian runs away

Genres: Young Adult

Hardcover

First published November 6, 1984

About the author

Prolific English children and young adult author.

Had her first book published while still in high school, then studied theater at Webber-Douglas in London. Her most well-known work is the Point Crime novel Dance with Death. Others include Plague 99, After the Plague (previously "Come Lucky April"), Big Tom, Family Fan Club and Shrinking Violet, as well as the fantasy The Wizard In the Woods.

Today, Ure is very popular with British female teenage readers with novels such as Shrinking Violet, Family Fan Club and Passion Flower.

Ure has also translated Danish writer Sven Hassel's WWII novels to English.

Reviews

[Hayley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of my favourite books when I was around 12 and I hadn't re-read it in years.
I loved the unresolved ending and the themes around vegetarianism and depression.

[Lisa Blackross · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite books ever - there is a sequel (that I discovered years later).

[SBC · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a nice read. Maggie has grown up in a very intellectual family but has been friends with the laid-back, non-academic, self-styled fashion model Val for many years (not really a model). Now she is meant to enter her last year of high school then be a doctor like the rest of the family. But she's had enough. She really needs a break, but thinks she just wants a complete change. She drops out to go to a course in Shorthand-Typing with Val and then travel.

Her parents were shifting farther away so she goes into a small flat in a divided up house of different levels. There she meets Sebastian, a boy who was in the same year at the private school as her brother Chris and has a reputation for being mad as a hatter. He got kicked out of school for standing up for his ideals and now they think he has been kicked out of Cambridge. He is working as a labourer. He is very sensitive, insists on animal rights and vegetarianism and socialism and more. He often talks about suicide.

Maggie becomes very good friends with Sebastian and they spend a lot of time together and end up sharing a cat they find, Sunday. They have one kiss, when he comes to her parents' house for Christmas, but he is a very difficult person, verbally protesting in butcher's shops, etc. Then one night Sunday goes missing and Sebastian is really cut up about it, but Maggie is too fed up and tired to give him any attention. He goes missing and she realises he actually has a mental illness and they do find him but it makes her decide to be a psychiatrist.

Maggie has a nice older brother, Jesse, who is a good character and a blithering sister, Dot, who nevertheless is kind. I thought the opening argument was interesting - here is this parent, her mother, saying her parents wouldn't let her do what she wanted to do, then she does the same thing to her daughter. Also the idea that she gave up her career to raise kids, so now that kid should have the career she wanted to do. Mick and Paula the neighbours I thought were great characters, just young people flatting together, as Mick went to school with Chris and Sebastian.

It was really quite a lovely read. Sebastian was a compelling character and it was well written. My only complaint would be the potential implied snobbery about secretarial work! Described as a bitter-sweet love story but it wasn't really bitter, it was lovely.