'There is no such thing as forgetting.'
When I read the line above, there is only word to describe what I felt: intrigued.
Back to Blackbrick, a book that I couldn't help flipping open the minute I got it, is one of the best I've read so far: it's so different; so unique. For one, it handles the extremely sensitive topic of Alzheimer's, a disease that slowly deteriorates your loved ones into, well, shells of what they once were. Secondly, it's done entirely from a young boy's point of view and to top it all off, the tale flows like liquid between present day Ireland to Ireland during the World War Two Era, in a large (and a little spooky) estate called Blackbrick.
Meet Cosmo, a boy who lost his brother in a freak accident and his mother (sort of) when she moved some seventeen thousand miles away, abandoning him, which leaves him with no choice but to live with his grandparents, and, to add the cherry on top of a not-at-all-perfect cake, is now slowly losing his grandfather, the person he now loves and looks up to most in this world.
And then, social workers come to take him away from his grandparents and his beloved horse is sent away. The future seems bleak, but his grandfather, out of the blue, gives him an ancient key to Blackbrick, a place that young Cosmo has never heard of but runs away to anyway, to honour what could possibly be one of his grandfather's last lucid moments.
At Blackbrick, watch how one young boy learns the secrets of the past; how he learns that no matter how hard you try, life doesn't work out the way you once would've liked it too. The novel tells us that the past cannot be changed, no matter how bad you want it to.
This book has so much more, with shocking revelations and a rather quirky how-to-change-the-past plan: it always, always, keeps you guessing.
An excellent debut novel by Sarah Moore Fitzgerald which teaches us how, even with a disease that takes your memory away, there is no such thing as forgetting - read it!
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