Perhaps telling this story through the point of view of a five year old was a good way to avoid telling a story that actually made logical sense, after all the boy could only observe and understand so much.
First of all, I still can’t see how ‘Ma’ felt the need to spill all the gory details of her life and abduction, and then more or less guilt trip her son into being her ‘hero’ ALL within a three day period (and not bit by bit in all the years they’ve been together). Assuming she cares about his well being as much as we are told over and over again, why traumatise him like that? Are we supposed to believe he understood all this in a couple of days, considering he had led such a happy fantasy life for years.
After the escape, which was totally unrealistic, Ma, who we had come to know as a nice person becomes a total bitch. Yes a lot of this makes sense, the world is after all new and frightening and the media were not helping. However, the snapping at the hospital staff, and her extreme rudeness to her mothers husband was unnecessary. The suicide attempt would have made a lot more sense if she has not gone on and on about what a great mother she was.
A few incidental details also rubbed me the wrong way. The first obvious one was the fact that she was still breastfeeding him, and the easy way in which he could at any time come up to her and lift up her shirt (completely contradictory of the extremely structured up to the minute way in which they spent their time). Whilst every mother is entitled to do whatever they want, I personally think nursing a boy that can walk, talk, plan an escape etc etc is just a bit creepy. It felt like she was doing this more for herself than for the (wrong) belief that her body produces nutrients that could help him (as she wasn’t eating any better than him). Same thing goes for the taking baths together and general nakedness which was not sexual but created yet another warped belief in the boys head (they belong to each other, her skin is his skin) which was transferred inappropriately when he felt the need to touch his naked female cousin and wander why she did not have hair like his ma.
A question which i asked myself time and time again was why she kept him, this turned out to be the same question the interviewer asked after their escape - why did she not ask the guy to abandon him in a hospital, so he can be adopted and cared for in a more ‘normal’ environment.
When she admitted she had an abortion in her late teens (before her abduction) I wandered if she kept Jack for purely selfish reasons. I think it’s safe to say her abortion was due to the fact that she was unable to raise a child properly during that transitional (high school/college) time in her life, and so why did this logic not apply to her son? Whilst her argument that Jacks childhood was not weird, because it is/was all he knew, was a good enough excuse, I can’t help buy wander if she just wanted company in that miserable situation (can’t say if this is good or bad or if I won’t have done the same), as opposed to putting his well-being first.
All this aside I enjoyed reading the book, like a lot of people i skimmed a lot of the annoying monologues, but generally, it was a good enough story to read, if only to see how it ended.
