Hello, I Must Be Going

This story puts the reader in the very places Frankie inhabits. Throughout the tough years of her adolescence, Hodgen expertly creates the life, family, and times of a misunderstood, often stepped-on young woman trying to find her place. A must read!

The author, Christie Hodgen made a wise and wonderful choice to have a child narrate this book. Frankie Hawthorne is nine years old when her father, whom she is very close to, commits suicide and leaves both she and her younger brother, Teddy to kind of fend for themselves because their mother works all the time and when she isn't working she's glued to the TV set. Frankie has a widly ascerbic, mocking personality and sense of humor. She carries the entire novel and does so quite well. Every line in this book is placed just right and is authentic. This book is very much like real life and I enjoyed it very much.

Disaffection, unemployment, the government's disregard for returning veterans, an increasingly unpopular war: all these things color the daily travails of the Hawthorne family, near Boston in the 1980's. For nine-year-old Frankie and her younger brother, Teddy, such problems do not exist, protected by their parents, Gerry and Randall, for that all-too-brief respite called childhood. Gerry works double shifts at a local restaurant, Friendly's, while Randall, a Vietnam amputee, attends to the needs of the children, filling their days with foolish jokes and silly banter, endless Groucho Marx imitations ("Hello, I must be going"), a magical world of TV images and spontaneous laughter. Whatever tensions bedevil their parent's marriage, Frankie and Teddy are exempt, at least until fate intervenes. Even an unexpected visit from "Uncle Harpo" only adds to the children's enjoyment, enthralled by story-filled hours and raucous humor as the brothers reprise the antics of their own youth. When Randall shoots himself, no longer able to sustain the despair that wracks his days, Frankie and Teddy's childhood comes to an abrupt end. Gerry is overwhelmed, barely treading the rising water of her own grief and helpless to protect her children from the sudden tragedy. Teddy and Frankie rise bravely to the occasion, the emotional fissures of the family only gradually surfacing as the years pass. Later Frankie withdraws, often viewing herself from the third person; Teddy throws increasingly violent tantrums, railing at the unfairness of his young life, set upon a self-destructive path; and Gerry stares, hypnotized by the television, staggering between work and home, drinking herself to sleep, muttering, "you kids", unable to reach her flailing children: "The trouble with the dead was that they packed up and left you, and there was nothing you could do about it." The author taps into the bittersweet memories of childhood, evoking the fragile and transient moments when a child's existence is not yet trampled by the world. Written in Frankie's perspective, this poignant family drama is infused with unexpected grace, the girl sensitive to her mother's desperate attempts to keep her family safe despite the tensions that drive them apart. They gather religiously in front of their black and white television, enthralled by the simple dramas played out on the screen, the flickering TV almost a family member, the stories as real as any they share in these bleak days. Sustained only by their determination to survive, the family makes a remarkable journey from grief to hope, each battered by a shared loss. Hello, I Must Be Going is a remarkable novel, filled with transcendent moments and heartbreak, unconditional love and laughter triumphant in the face of sorrow and defeat. Luan Gaines/ 2006.