Review - Life in Miniature by Linda Schlossberg

Spoken from 12 year old Adie's point of view this was a different perspective of a story told of a mother's gradual decline into delusion and how two daughters Miriam and Adie try to hold it together, how Miriam gives up and disappears and how the 12 year old Adie is left trying to hold it together with some semblance of normality.

It is also sad to see how without the extended family support that would have existed some years ago, how isolated one small family of mother and two daughters can become. It hit me very hard of how children could be left bereft and open to anything and everything the world could throw at you, if there is no caring adult around to keep an eye on things. How Adie and Miriam are forced to cope with life, school, neighbours and the world in general is the focus of this book.

Mindy as the mother and her gradual decline is sad - how Adie is forced to accept that her mother is different, how Adie also begins to realize the fickleness of friends who may or may not be there for you, and how you just have to learn to cope when everything else is falling apart is very well told in this book. A sad story which ends well enough but it opened my eyes to the isolation of the modern family. Despite people knowing about Mindy's mental state no one wants to get involved - the sense of minding your own business and maintaining personal space has been carried out to the point of it being almost indifference to the plight of this family. I wondered whether this is going to be the situation for many families in the future. This idea of not interfering in things which do not concern us may be taking us to the point of not being even aware of situations which genuinely need help?

A book which opened a lot of questions for me and made me re-think my own boundaries of what I should or shouldn't do.