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A review by iffer
Finding H.F. by Julia Watts
3.0
Finding H.F. addresses several issues, going beyond the typical “coming out” theme in books labeled as GLBT, and addressing regional, educational, religious, and socioeconomic differences in America. In fact, the main character, H.F., short for Heavenly Faith, the name that her devout Southern Baptist grandmother gave her, doesn’t even come out to her grandmother. Rather, Finding H.F. is, in the words on the back of the paperback version of the novel, about a “life waiting…that is very different from what they’ve known, and the concept of family is more far-reaching than they ever could have expected”; it’s a story of H.F. and her best friend Bo’s journey to explore the world beyond the small coal-mining town in which they have grown up, learn about themselves and their place in the world, and return to their home, changed. I suppose that, in a way, Finding H.F. is the quintessential Joseph Campbell-esque hero’s quest in the form of the American road trip infused with GLBT themes. Julia Watt’s writing is engaging, and I could imagine H.F.’s voice in my head thinking her thoughts out loud. Furthermore, while the novel ends hopefully, as children’s books should, it doesn’t downplay the hardships in its characters lives or the lives of those like them. The characters are well-developed, and seem like real people with plausible motivations that one could meet. I think that this novel also succeeds in presenting portraying individuals as complex, avoiding stereotypes about Northerners and Southerners, country folk and city folk, heterosexuals and homosexuals, blacks and whites, religious and non-religious, etc.
Perhaps one of the things that struck me most was the way in which Julia Watts chose the meeting with H.F. and her mother to play out in the end. I think that I would’ve felt cheated if H.F.’s mother really had welcomed her with open arms, or had ended up getting a college education and a good job. That sort of ending would’ve had the hollowness of deus ex machina. Although the ending was sad, it was a complex and realistic portrayal of humans and the cycles in which they are often trapped. Although Finding H.F. does not sugar-coat things, as is evidenced by H.F.’s mother, H.F.’s inability to tell her grandmother about her sexual orientation, and Laney’s disappearance, it does offer hope at the end, the hope that we can all find a place where we belong where people love an understand us.
Perhaps one of the things that struck me most was the way in which Julia Watts chose the meeting with H.F. and her mother to play out in the end. I think that I would’ve felt cheated if H.F.’s mother really had welcomed her with open arms, or had ended up getting a college education and a good job. That sort of ending would’ve had the hollowness of deus ex machina. Although the ending was sad, it was a complex and realistic portrayal of humans and the cycles in which they are often trapped. Although Finding H.F. does not sugar-coat things, as is evidenced by H.F.’s mother, H.F.’s inability to tell her grandmother about her sexual orientation, and Laney’s disappearance, it does offer hope at the end, the hope that we can all find a place where we belong where people love an understand us.