Life in Miniature

Life in Miniature
Linda Schlossberg
2010
325 pages
published by Kensington

********************

Adie was born three months premature and has remained small. sFor some reason that I never fully got, that’s a big part of the beginning of the book, and then it seems to never be mentioned again, except in reminders to eat your veggies (although mom also seems to be overly tolerant of doughnuts by the end of the book).

Adie’s mom, Mindy, has mental health issues that slowly reveal themselves as the story progresses. Adie and her older sister Miriam don’t let on to anyone that their mother is increasingly paranoid (about the fact that her daughters will fall prey to drugs and that there are men in a white car after her). Miriam evntually gets fed up and runs away to a commune in Oregon, leaving Adie alone to deal with her mom and the increasing paranoia. Finally, after her mom pulls her out of school to spend three weeks on the run, living in hotels, Adie gets fed up too, and takes off to find Miriam. Incredibly, she manages to hitchhike and take the bus straight to Miriam, who also incredibly, is ready to return home. So they call their mom and convince her that the men in the white car followed Adie and are now safely behind bars and to please drive to Oregon and pick them up.

Which she does.

The end.

I was totally into it, right up until the end…which I just found a little too…oh, what’s the word? Convenient? Incredible? Abrupt? I wasn’t totally sold on how easy it was for Adie to find her big sis, and how easy it was to sell mom on the fact that the men in the white car were now in jail.