Review: TOFFEE by Sarah Crossan

 

Toffee by Sarah Crossan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The astonishing new novel from the incomparable, multi-award-winning and Laureate, Sarah Crossan.

I am not who I say I am,
and Marla isn't who she thinks she is.

I am a girl trying to forget.
She is a woman trying to remember.

Allison has run away from home, and with nowhere to live, finds herself hiding out in the shed of what she thinks is an abandoned house. But the house isn't empty. An elderly woman named Marla, with dementia, lives there – and she mistakes Allison for an old friend from her past called Toffee.

Allison is used to hiding who she really is, and trying to be what other people want her to be. And so, Toffee is who she becomes. After all, it means she has a place to stay. There are worse places she could be.

But as their bond grows, and Allison discovers how much Marla needs a real friend, she begins to ask herself - where is home? What is a family? And most importantly, who am I, really?

----

This novel-in-verse has to be one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking books I've read. The depiction of dementia in it is so truthful and real, and I felt raw reading this book. Several times, it had me crying. It's just so, so real.

And that wasn't the only 'truth' in this book--it spoke a lot about abusive parents and domestic violence, and this just felt like so, so real too. Like, I could feel Allison's pain, and I loved how Crossan still showed how Allison did love her dad, that there were good moments between them, despite how he was abusive toward her.

This book covers a lot of difficult topics: Allison's mother died giving birth to her and her father emotionally neglected her as a child, which only got worse as she got older. There's depictions of violence and abuse, and Allison leaves him, making herself homeless. She travels to Bude (always fun reading a book set in the town near me!) and stumbles upon Marla, an elderly woman with dementia who thinks she's her friend, Toffee. Allison assumes the identity of Toffee in order so she can stay at Marla's house, and in doing so, really comes to care for Marla. Their relationship is just so, so beautiful.

But the whole time, there's this sense of a countdown--that this cannot last forever. Is Allison's dad looking for her? What about the latest of his girlfriends who suddenly left, even though she and Allison were a united front? And what happens when Marla gets too unwell to still be living in her own home? Allison/Toffee can't look after her forever. I won't spoil the ending--but I will say it works. It's satisfying, and it draws everything together.

The other character who has a lot of page-time is Lucy, a girl whom befriends Allison. While their friendship seems innocent at first, it soon becomes clear Lucy is using Allison. She pays her to do her homework, she invites friends over to Marla's house and doesn't respect Allison when she asks them not to break or steal anything. And I thought this inclusion of a one-sided friendship really adds to the many different ways that Crossan explores the toxic nature of man, because there are a lot of depiction of this and unkindness. Allison's dad is the main example, but Lucy parallels him on a smaller level, and then you've also got Marla's son who shows up and is revealed to only be concerned about himself and not really care for his mother. 

But all of this is offset by the tender friendship that Allison and Marla form, albeit Marla never really knows who Allison is. 

There's a lot of sadness in this book, a lot of heartbreak and pain, and I've come to understand that I love sad books. These are the books that just 'get me'. And I love novels-in-verse, and every now and again, I read one that I find so inspiring and that encourages me to work more on my own novels-in-verse. This was just that book. It was so good it was motivating.

The language is just stunningly beautiful. I wanted to fold myself up within these pages and never leave the book.



View all my reviews