Poor Dear by Claire Oshetsky

Monday, Mar. 3, 2025--San Antonio

Poor Dear by Claire Oshetsky has lots of good reviews.  I read it because of one on NPR.  But it was slow reading for me, especially in the beginning.  I spent the whole time I was reading the book trying to figure out exactly what was happening.  Margaret seems to be autistic with indications of high intelligence.  She teaches herself to read by looking at the books as someone reads to her.  She creates her own form of script to write the stories that appear in her mind.   She has a vocabulary that is far above what is expected of a child her age.  But at age 4, a tragedy occurs.  Her best friend is a bit of a wild child--always seeking adventure in dangerous ways.  While playing a game in an unused shed, the friend suggests a game and hides in an old ice chest that locks automatically when she closes the lid.  Margaret can hear her friend panicking and trying to get out of the chest, but Margaret cannot figure out how to operate the latch to free her.  She spends her whole life feeling guilt from that day with the entire town believing that the death of her friend was her fault.  Margaret's conscience seems to take the form of an imaginary animal called Poor Dear which is almost always around needling her about what happened and what she needs to do to atone for the death of her friend.  As the story progresses, there are good and bad experiences in Margaret's life, but the mental illness she is developing keeps interfering.  It's an open-ended book where the reader must decide what Margaret eventually does.  I gave the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5.