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A review by caroleheidi
Back to Blackbrick by Sarah Moore Fitzgerald
5.0
Back to Blackbrick is a magnificently clever book that was both heart warming and heart breaking in the same breath.
Alzheimer’s disease is something that affects an awful lot of people and is difficult for the people around them to deal with and Blackbrick handles this with a sensitive touch and a twist of fantasy.
Cosmo, the narrator of the story, hasn’t had the easiest of starts in life – his brother died when he was ten and his mother has vanished to another country to ‘work’, leaving him to live with his grandparents. The development of his Grandfather’s Alzheimer’s is the final straw and Cosmo refuses to accept it. At first he does what any young teenager would do when faced with a problem he doesn’t know how to fix – he asks the internet and believes every word he reads.
It is touchingly funny as Cosmo does his best to follow the instructions on a ‘Memory Cure’ website and you can’t help but chuckle at the outcomes of his endeavours (such as sticking post-it notes to everything so his Grandad won’t forget what they are called).
Then the book takes an almost fantastical turn as Cosmo follows a bizarre instruction from his Grandfather – to take an old key and visit Blackbrick Abbey, via the South Gates.
I loved the magic of this story, the relationship between Cosmo and his young Grandfather in Blackbrick was brilliantly funny as Cosmo struggled to try and shape the future without letting on everything he knew and making himself look like a lunatic.
Sensitively handling everything from Alzheimer’s through to death and childbirth, Back to Blackbrick manages to balance comedy and tragedy perfectly and had me crying and laughing in equal measure.
The only problem I had with this book was that for the first few chapters I managed to convince myself that Cosmo was a girl. I’m not sure what triggered this but I was really confused when I realised I was wrong and it threw me for a few pages. By half way through though I had completely forgotten my previous confusion and it didn’t detract from the story at all.
Alzheimer’s disease is something that affects an awful lot of people and is difficult for the people around them to deal with and Blackbrick handles this with a sensitive touch and a twist of fantasy.
Cosmo, the narrator of the story, hasn’t had the easiest of starts in life – his brother died when he was ten and his mother has vanished to another country to ‘work’, leaving him to live with his grandparents. The development of his Grandfather’s Alzheimer’s is the final straw and Cosmo refuses to accept it. At first he does what any young teenager would do when faced with a problem he doesn’t know how to fix – he asks the internet and believes every word he reads.
It is touchingly funny as Cosmo does his best to follow the instructions on a ‘Memory Cure’ website and you can’t help but chuckle at the outcomes of his endeavours (such as sticking post-it notes to everything so his Grandad won’t forget what they are called).
Then the book takes an almost fantastical turn as Cosmo follows a bizarre instruction from his Grandfather – to take an old key and visit Blackbrick Abbey, via the South Gates.
I loved the magic of this story, the relationship between Cosmo and his young Grandfather in Blackbrick was brilliantly funny as Cosmo struggled to try and shape the future without letting on everything he knew and making himself look like a lunatic.
Sensitively handling everything from Alzheimer’s through to death and childbirth, Back to Blackbrick manages to balance comedy and tragedy perfectly and had me crying and laughing in equal measure.
The only problem I had with this book was that for the first few chapters I managed to convince myself that Cosmo was a girl. I’m not sure what triggered this but I was really confused when I realised I was wrong and it threw me for a few pages. By half way through though I had completely forgotten my previous confusion and it didn’t detract from the story at all.