My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Three

Judy Blume, Tiger Eyes

It seems that most girls of my generation read at least one Judy Blume novel. Tiger Eyes wasn't the most popular choice, though; Forever... generally was, with its explicit language, discussion of sexuality, and sometimes-comical references to anatomy. (Of course, there was also Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. But that's a different story...) And while Forever... is, for its own many reasons, an important novel, Tiger Eyes really changed my adolescent life.

Tiger Eyes is the story of Davey, whose father is murdered during a corner-store robbery. Her mother moves the family to New Mexico, where Davey tries to reintegrate into school and "normal" life. She starts spending time in the nearby canyon, where she meets Wolf, a young Hispanic man; she also starts volunteering in a hospital, where she meets a variety of patients. With these relationships, Davey begins to work through the grief, anger, and guilt surrounding her father's killing.

This is absolutely a young-adult novel: it deals extensively with issues of identity, sexuality, and individuation. It also persists for me in ways that other Blume books did not. The setting in Los Alamos allows the author to contrast Davey's personal emotional realm with the larger issues associated with nuclear weapons and the military–industrial complex. However, it is Davey's outsider status that I responded to most, and in particular I drew hope from her fraught relationship with Wolf. The tiger's eye stone at the centre of that relationship became a poignant, personal symbol for me.

There is much about this book that is forgettable. Some of the family by-play is quite silly relative to the introspection of Davey's moments in the canyon, and some of the themes are too much of the moment (e.g., the slogan "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle"). But for me, being able to identify with the general experience of alienation and grief (even through very different circumstances) was important to getting through some difficult moments of growing up. I hope everyone who needed books to help them through growing up found a book like this one.