Kit's Law

Once I opened Kit's" Law, I did not put it away until I had read all 383 pages. Granted, this was during the Christmas break when I was off from work and could wake up at whatever hour I pleased the morning after.

What in this first novel hooked me? I'm not sure. I told you before that I like novels that attempt to capture the inside story of mental illness. Maybe that's it. Maybe I was fascinated with how this teenager dealt with having a woman with a child's mind for a mother. It was a scenario I couldn't resist letting Donna Morissey pull me into. And believe me I got into it for there were times I bawled as though I were Kit, caught in the middle of this unusual trilogy of women.

But then maybe it was the moral dilemmas that Kit must come to terms with that kept me turning the pages. Kit must choose between her own freedom and doing what's best for her mom. Kit also makes a startling discovery which forces her to make the most difficult choice of all.

I must admit that the first few chapters were slow moving and I might have put away the book if Lizzy (Kit's grandma and surrogate mother) hadn't died suddenly. For me that's where the action begins, though the the preceeding chapters were essential to getting me rooting for Kit.

I enjoyed the Newfoundland dialect which marks the narration, and there are several very engaging secondary characters. What I did not like was the tortuous route to a resolution which I found to be morally ambivalent. This was a disappointment for me since the entire novel was so critical of duplicity and ambivalence.