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Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
In J.M. Woodward’s The Holding, thirteen-year-old Anna and her nine-year-old brother Simon live between their mother’s crowded family home and their father’s basement apartment in central-southern Ontario. Anna finds relief at the barn with Bravo, the horse she rides, while Simon spends every permitted minute inside Gorilla Tag, a virtual-reality game where he moves through the world as a gorilla. Each begins receiving messages from an unseen companion: Anna through dreams and riding, Simon through a gorilla friend he has known in dreams since childhood. Their father’s rescue cat, Auggie, senses an absence around them, while their mother’s cat, Gracie, notices the unseen force taking shape. When Simon learns that he and Anna may come from two distant places divided by an ancient hostility, the siblings must discover why they were brought into the same family.
“Parts of us. From two different places, into the same family, to learn to love each other across the kind of difference that we are.” J.M. Woodward’s The Holding is a fantastic novel, and shows how children reveal love through completely different ways of seeing the world. Anna and Simon have distinct personalities, yet their bond develops through small acts of recognition that feel earned across the whole book. The family is beautifully realized because every adult responds believably, giving even brief domestic moments lasting importance. There's a scene at a horse show, where Simon finally watches Anna ride with his full attention. She later recognizes herself in a recurring shape from her drawings and writes him a private letter, gathering everything the author has built between them into one tender moment. This is so beautiful and creative. Very highly recommended.
