The Mess of Our Lives

A great YA read that I found enjoyable and fascinating, yet a little disconcerting. Jordan Baxter is a 17-year-old teenager struggling with life not only due to neglect but because he does not understand his mentally unwell Mother, who is a hoarder. Jordan is one of the outliers at school as a result of his mother’s hoarding – he can’t regularly shower, and he can’t bring friends home.

It is also a book of hope. Music is the key to lifting Jordan above the ‘mess’. It is this that stops life from being completely unmanageable. But the greatest lesson learned in reading is that of acceptance and this is a lesson for us all: acceptance of some of the most difficult things life can send us.

Mary-Anne Scott writes with precision combined with an empathetic tone. The conflict Jordan experiences feels real and as a reader you are right there alongside him. It is not difficult either to get a picture of the conditions in which Jordan lives: damp, mouldy smells, and mouse droppings, and stuff everywhere so that they need to walk sideways like crabs.

I walked past the school library yesterday and to my surprise I noticed the novel on the display shelf. The librarian thoroughly enjoyed it as have those students who have taken it out. It would potentially make for a great Year 10 novel study. I certainly would like to teach it.