I have no idea why I didn’t think of Jacqueline Wilson when I started this rereading project because I realised that I’ve reread both The Illustrated Mum and Lola Rose many times over the years. In fact, I love Lola Rose so much that I own two editions of the book – the English and Japanese edition. This is actually pretty rare for me because I tend to just keep one of each book (though bookstagram is tempting me to start collecting books).
Like with The Illustrated Mum, this was darker than I remembered. I mean, I knew the premise was dark – Jayni, her mum, and her brother are running away from her abusive dad – but I guess my greatest impression of the book came from the beginning, where they had an escapist life just after running away. What I didn’t realise was that Jayni has essentially been parentified and acts as a mother-figure to her little brother. This is really clear if you look at the change in her after her Aunt Barbara comes and she gets some security (though the Voice of Doom is still there).
Because Briana from Pages Unbound talked about mums in YA fiction recently, the mum in this story (Victoria/Nikki) caught my attention this reread. I know Lola Rose isn’t quite YA but it is for “older readers”, according to the blurb.
Nikki/Victoria is not a great mum. Her biggest flaw is that she needs to have a man in her life to feel complete – the reason why she stayed with an abusive spouse and the reason behind some of her more maddening decisions after they leave. But, she’s not completely hopeless. After all, the entire reason that they leave is because Jay, the abusive spouse/father, hit Jayni/Lola Rose for the first time. And apart from her deep-seated need to have a man around, she’s not that bad of a mum. She knows that she can do better but she is trying and does her best to take care of their emotional and physical needs. Jayni/Lola Rose might have been parentified because of her mum’s fatal flaw, but she has a mum who is trying.
(Personally, I like this a lot better than just having an absent mum in books)
Personally, I thought that for all her flaws, Nikki/Victoria was a sympathetic character. She, Jayni/Lola Rose, and Kenny/Kendall obviously love and care for each other and that makes you want the three of them to have a happy ending. As with The Illustrated Mum, Lola Rose is a book that still has the ability to pull at my heartstrings even though I’ve read it many times.
Another one that sounds both good and sad. I am glad you find Nikki to be a sympathetic character. Definitely agree that so often, mums with abusive spouses are doing their best. Their flaws have higher stakes than usual because of the presence of the abuser.
Also agree that I prefer flawed but goodhearted mums to absent mums in literature. Mother-child relationships are so complicated that I wonder whether sometimes, it’s just easier for the author to have the mum not be there than to try to portray all the complexity.
Good point about the difficulty of the complexity. I think one reason Lola Rose (and The Illustrated Mum) has made such a big impact on me was that the relationships in the book felt realistic, which gave it an even bigger emotional punch.