Losing Eddie

by Deborah Joy Corey

Losing Eddie is a first novel stunningly narrated by a nameless nine-year-old who sees herself as the outsider in her own family.
Inside her home, disaster draws her mother into bouts of terrible sadness and drives her father to drink. Her brother-in-law is a drinker, too, and abusive, so her sister's come home with her twin babies. Her older brother, Eddie, just out of jail, seems determined to get put back in. Her accident-prone younger brother sops up whatever attention remains.
Our little narrator watches, records, recounts. Seeing, hearing, touching, and storing it up to tell back to herself is one thing. Making sense of it is another.
The physical setting of this child's story is defined by a two-lane road that cuts through a remote corner of New Brunswick. The emotional setting is the strife and struggle of poverty - in all its guises, a place laid open by a child's dear and unjudgmental account of one year's tribulation inside its farmhouses, graveyards, churches, inside its one-room school and its charity old folks' home.
Privy to the inner workings of this jealous, scrappy girl's mind, the reader is witness to her discovery of herself against the dark backdrop of daily turmoil. To watch her turning her crystallized observations toward the light is to understand the staunchness of human curiosity and intellect. To hear her, at the very end of her story, name herself in a narrative voice that rings forth with her sharp, innocent perception of love, is to know how miracles work.

Genres: Fiction

222 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[An Te Chu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Made me bawl like a baby on BC Ferries

[Dixie Keyes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book takes readers into the mind and life of nine-year-old Laura, whose family lives in Canada. Despite universal health care and other social benefits Canadians have, this family and their neighbors live in poverty. Laura tells the story, and her lens balances innocence with reality. She describes the purple circles around her mother's eyes after losing Eddie, their oldest sibling. She describes the horrible dirtiness of her friend's household as well as the beauty of purple lupines in a field beyond the home. Like I did at that age, and probably most of us, we didn't know that things were as bad as they really were, and we were able to find optimism and resilience because of this unknowing. Laura will take you to the heart, to places inside of all of us we need to visit from time to time. The author's style makes this whole book work, and there are beautiful lines threaded throughout the novel.

[Ginny Swanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a very detailed description of a nine year old girl and talking about the greif of her and her family losing her older brother Eddie. Disturbing stuff, but it would shock the readers into actually believing that the stuff happpening in this book is actually very real in the real world. We just don't expect it to happen, or we just don't notice it till it's to late. Very good book. recommended to all.

[Jody Gorham · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Losing Eddie" is a beautifully written story of how one family struggles with grief and loss and is told through the eyes of a young girl, Laura. It's set in poverty stricken, rural New Brunswick during the '60's when one room school houses still existed. This book reminds me Who Has Seen the Wind? by W.O. Mitchell, using the landscape and physical surroundings to portray Laura and her family's feelings of loss, guilt, sorrow, and loneliness, but also love, kinship, healing, and hope.

[Majuch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although i found it a disturbing novel, the, stark reality kept me reading and yearning for the impossible - a positive outcome. There were the odd glimmers of hope scattered through the novel, glimmers that served to emphasize the vast differences between my personal experience of childhood and that of the protagonist. it wasn't a book that I "enjoyed" but it was compelling reading.

[Isabella · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is never talked about but it's one of my all time favorites. I've read it about 6-7 times and I never read books twice. Great Canadian book and a must-read for everyone!

[Joy Carreño · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the easy feel of this book. It is told from the point of view of a child. There was some confusion in the timeline. It jumps seasons. In one chapter it is winter, in the next it is the beginning of summer. Later the mother is hospitalized a couple of times. This also gets confusing because there are few literary transitions to indicate when she is released the second time. In one chapter she has to go back to the hospital and two chapters later she is home without a mention of what happened.