It's Love We Dont Understand [Hardcover]

Bart Moeyart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 2001

Built around three simple but emotionally charged scenes, It's Love We Don't Understand looks at a broken family through th eyes of a 15-year-old girl. The first of the three stories plunges straight into a fierce family quarrel. The storyteller, her sister Edie, her brother Axel, and her mother -- with her latest boyfriend -- are driving in a very hot car. When Axel suddenly stops the car and expels the boyfriend, a violent fight erupts. In the next story the family comes into Grandma's inheritance, which includes a dog and an old man confined to a wheelchair. In the final story, the sisters grieve the loss of Axel, who has fled from home to live in Charlestown with a friend. The narrator carries on imaginary conversations with Axel in which she expresses her sadness. Bart Moeyaert delicately and skillfully traces the subtle thread of love as it winds through a young girl's life, shaping her character and her destiny.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Belgian author Moeyaert (Bare Hands) evokes a variety of moods in three chronologically arranged scenes, narrated by the third of four children, known only as "Sis." These slices of life reveal her feelings about her mother, brother, two sisters and other characters who periodically join their household. The girl's descriptions of her surroundings coincide with her emotional landscape. For instance, the author emphasizes Sis's repugnance for her mother's current lover through the claustrophobic aura of the opening scene, which takes place on a car trip. While the narrator's brother, in the driver's seat, openly expresses his hostility towards the man, Sis sits silently next to him in the back seat ("In the curve, Bordzek slumps against me like a brick. His head drops forward and I can't move anymore"). Humor melds with compassion in the second episode with the arrival of a "visitor," bequeathed to the family in her grandmother's will. Sis envisions the stranger as generous and handsome, but he turns out to be an unkempt old man in a wheelchair. The final chapter comes to a quiet climax, in which Sis's maturation comes clearly into focus; she experiences a moment of acceptance and peace as she pauses from her fantasy of her absent brother and becomes fully aware of those remaining at home her two sisters, Skip and his dog. Through the voice of his innocent yet keenly observant and compassionate narrator, the author eloquently expresses the nuances and subtleties of the relationships that shape the person she is becoming. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 7-9 A descriptive blurb states that this story has immediacy because it is told from a child's point of view; however, it is disjointed and confusing and seems more like an impressionist painting than a novel. The author's attempt at psychological drama disintegrates into a melodrama, because plot and characters are poorly delineated, relationships are vague, and motivations are indistinct. The story centers on a family's journey to and stay at a relative's house. Events loosely mark the passage of time chronologically, but do not progress toward a meaningful climax. For example, the narrator alludes to her mother's boyfriend abusing her brother and a senile, sickly grandfather figure arrives inexplicably. The landmarks and time references are also vague. In the first chapter, the characters are traveling in a stifling hot car somewhere in the countryside en route to the relative's house. Later chapters describe that house set on an indistinct piece of farmland. Even the weather adds to the depressing aura of this book; it's either unbearably hot or rainy. Presumably, the theme is meant to be a description of the "human spirit," but unfortunately, the message is muddled. For psychological drama, choose Robert Cormier or Chris Crutcher; their novels successfully include intense introspection firmly set in time and place, which gives them immediacy as well as poignancy. -Susan Cooley, Tower Hill School, Wilmington, DE
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 142 pages
• Publisher: Front Street imprint of Boyds Mills Press; 1 edition (October 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1886910715
• ISBN-13: 978-1886910713
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,576,050 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Review, November 6, 2003

By 

Katie (Miller Place, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: It's Love We Dont Understand (Hardcover)

It's Love we don't understand, by Bart Moryaert is about a family's unconventional, dysfunctional problems. In this girls family it's her, her mother, her mother's boyfriend Brodzek, her younger sister Edie, her brother Axel, and older sister Bonnie. Its summer and its hot, and they are off to there older sisters house, crammed in a hot sweaty car. Axel hates Brodzek, and Axel gets in a fight with Brodzek and beats him up pretty bad. When they get to Bonnie's they found out that there grandmother had passed, her not begging the most easiest person to talk to and begging that close made it difficult to feel any emotion. But surprisingly she had left a will, and certain items to the family, including one in which asked to take care of a man who liked to be called the "boatman". Which unexpectedly turns out to be an old man in a wheel chair, which her mother doesn't think they should take care of, but her mind is kind of switched with the remark from her daughter "Don't you think of anyone but your self". This is a point of view from the third sister, who tells how she feels about her family and situations she dealt with.

I really liked this book because its detailed, about the way families get through hard times, and how different people deal with the situations fait gives them. It's at times funny, sad, and a tear jerkier at times. I would only really recommend this book to girls maybe to the ages of 11-16.