The Year Without Michael by Susan Beth Pfeffer – Book Review
No child has ever been considered to have kept a marriage together, much less saved what constitutes the entire family unit. It is true that people have remained bound by the contract and have remained within the same walls for the sake of the children. But the marriage was doomed if each member’s love, care, and respect for the other disintegrated in the flames of passionate self-interest to the exclusion of the other. Jody became the stability staple whose probes pricked the pride of both mother and father in an attempt to save what was destined for hell in a basket. He lost a brother, but saved a family thanks to his unique ability to separate from the problem that threatened to destroy the family unit, but finally, thanks to his efforts and perseverance, he kept it together as the marriage was originally intended.
Linda and Tom Chapman took a break from each other to think about what should have been thought throughout the marital relationship. Jody, the eldest of three children, survived a great deal of hardship with a father who seemed unusually undaunted; a mother whose temperament, prejudice, anger, and disappointment with her own feelings of failure as mother and wife warped her sense of values to the point of insanity; a younger sister, Kay, whose personal interest increased to unusual cosmic proportions; and a brother among them, Michael, who disappeared without a trace forever. Could this family remain intact under pressure from society that sympathized with them but kept aloof from what they feared might happen to them? Jody absorbed the brunt of the barrage of curious interrogators in high school, while Kay became something of a celebrity in high school. Kaye was determined that her older brother was already dead; Jody refused to give up hope; Linda became obsessed with her fanatical denial; and Tom did practically nothing.
The story poignantly indicates the elements that emerge linearly from the tragedy: shock, denial, anger, resentment, and finally acceptance or resignation. Members of the Chapman family engage these emotions in varying degrees of intensity throughout history, a credible involvement that pushes them to the brink of annihilation. No marriage is perfect, but an effort should be made to ensure that mutual vows of devotion through thick and thin are honored even when the temptations to avoid or evade them are overwhelming.
The story is not just the revelation of a tragic episode that is per se very real; It is a metaphor that represents the embodiment of any tragedy, physical, mental or emotional, that can happen to a family and threaten its integrity.
Assessment: The story is written as a diary that begins with Michael’s disappearance and ends with the Chapman family forming a united front to remain a meaningful family in the face of incredible adversity. Trace the emotional levels of those who feel guilty for causing what is attributable to fate, chance, accident, negligence, or simply the will of God. There was no expected closure as the reader might have anticipated; but everything in life is not subject to closure, not even death for those who believe in the transience of mortal life before enduring the supposed eternity of immortality. Michael’s disappearance may well have been the serendipitous event that saved siblings who otherwise would have perished at the incapable hands of confused parents.
Recommendation: All the middle and high school students could relate to the problems Jody faced even on the personal level he had with her. groomJim, who left her because he did not understand or was willing to confront what he considered abnormal behavior. It is a story that can help students reveal their sense of values to themselves.
Teaching: Characters lend themselves to in-depth analysis using methods that investigate what they say and what they do to reveal their values. Students can equate their values with those of any member of the Chapman family, grandparents (on the father’s side, in this scenario), or peers with whom they are associated. They can also determine what steps they would take to prevent such an event from happening to them or to cope with it if it did.