Benjamin Ludwig - Ginny Moon

Rating: 4/5

Review:  Good, but...

Benjamin Ludwig is a thoroughly admirable man who has written this book from close personal experience, having adopted a teenager with autism. Any criticism of a book written with such goodness of heart and nobility of purpose seems terribly churlish, but although I thought Ginny Moon had its merits, I had some reservations about it.

The story is narrated in the first person by Ginny, a girl with autism who has her 14th birthday during the story. She is very troubled by a traumatic past with her neglectful and violent birth mother and is now adopted by her Forever Family (the third family with whom she has tried to make a home). How her past affects her current behaviour is well depicted, the story emerges skilfully and one's heart is genuinely wrung by Ginny's plight and puzzlement at the world, even when she behaves in ways which look terrible to outsiders.

All of this is well done, parts of the book are very gripping and Ludwig plainly cares deeply for his subject and for Ginny, whose internal state he portrays well for the most part. However, I think his degree in Creative Writing interferes with what he is trying to do in places. Ginny talks in simple, literal sentences which are very convincing, but far too often some very non-Ginny language or phrasing intrudes. For example, "I am talking to the only person who can bring me to the other side of Forever. To the other side of the equals sign. He is gone." In the context, this is a heart-rending moment which Ludwig renders very well in those words…but they are the crafted words of a writer, not Ginny's voice at all, and this happened often enough to continually throw me out of the narrative. I also think the book is too long at nearly 400 pages; in the structure and plot Ludwig labours his points rather and a tighter structure would have made the impact greater, I think, and I had my doubts about the slightly Disney-esqe ending, too.

Ginny Moon is not a bad book at all and has some excellent things about it. I am genuinely sorry to be critical; it’s just that for me it doesn't compare with the brilliance of books like The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime (Mark Haddon), The Universe vs. Alex Woods (Gavin Extence) or Shtum (Jem Lester) and this comes with a somewhat qualified recommendation.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley}