CHAPTER EIGHT: ALEC
Thursday 27 April 2006
Chapter Eight is told from the point of view, Alec, Charlotte’s teenage son—the unborn baby from “Charlotte”. Alec’s story is the most contemporary and centres on the day he avoided being in a fatal car accident and discovers a photo of Connie and Jack in a biscuit tin in the brickwork of Rowena Parade. Rowena Parade now belongs to Charlotte and Stanzi because Frank has decided to live in a nursing home (page 252) and Alec and Libby are raised by Stanzi and Charlotte. This enables Jordan to showcase how family structures have expanded and changed over time. Alec is an angry and frustrated young man who feels trapped by his mother’s views and choices. He doesn’t have a phone, or an XBox (page 42) and in his words feels like a ‘Lep. Per’. Alec’s relationship with his fourteen-year-old half-sister is similarly strained and is captured in the kind of typical teen speak reserved just for siblings. For example, ‘You absolute prick’ (page 244) and other such gems such as: ‘Libby gives me her fuck off and die look’ (page 245). Even though Charlotte’s family is very different from the nuclear family of her grandparents’ generation there seems to be a suggestion that families are complicated and can suffer from unhappiness no matter what the set-up is. Unlike Jean, who lived her life fearing the judgement of others, Charlotte isn’t plagued by any such sense of shame or embarrassment about being single and about her children having different fathers. This reflects changing and more open attitudes about parenthood, marriage and what constitutes family. Alec’s unhappiness also stems from his absent father, ‘a hairy old blues musician who lives on an avocado farm near Mullumbimby’ who ‘sends [him] birthday cards at random times of the year’ (page 248). Sadly Craig’s attitude to children didn’t mellow with time and Libby’s relationship with her father, Ben, amplifies Alec’s feelings of disappointment. Ben is a ‘hot-shot Singaporean software designer’ and Libby visits him ‘for two weeks in the Christmas holidays, but that’s it’ (page 248) so there is a sense that even though Charlotte felt empowered to make her decisions about having a family, the fathers have been largely absent and have had the freedom to make other choices. Perhaps this could be read as a comment about how free women really are in the twenty-first century. Luckily for Alec though, Kip has been a wonderful and devoted grandfather, rescuing Alec from being (according to Alec): ‘the kid without the father’ (page 262). In fact, Kip’s gift of a Nintendo DS (page 256) on the sly inadvertently leads him to a photo of Connie and Jack hidden by Connie so many years ago in the brickwork of the house. This photo shakes Kip to the core. This is the photo on the front cover of the book and Kip reveals that he has kept Connie’s secret until this moment (page 259). Kip urges Alec to, ‘Never let anyone say goodbye…without kissing them’ (page 261) demonstrating the impact Connie’s sudden death has had on him and underlining the importance of never taking life and precious connections for granted.Kip accidentally leaves the photo at Rowena Parade and Alec resists the urge to go on a joyride to Rye with friends rather than comply with his mother’s request to ride the photograph over to his grandparents’ house. Tragically, his friends never make it to Rye because they are killed in a car accident. Thankfully cruel fate has not visited the Westaways again, even though it has visited heavily upon Alec's friends