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Reviewed by Sarah Stuart for Readers' Favorite
The Life of Abe by J. Scaddon is a drama set in Britain that opens in Liverpool, an English city on the river Mersey dominated by the docks. The majority of the story centres on the seaside town of Rhyl in Wales. Abe begins with his birth in 1923, as recounted to him by the family of his - at that time scandalous - unwed teenage mother. Born disabled, and suffering violent abuse as a child that left permanent injuries, made Abe a target for bullies. His life is a mixture of misery and love, poverty and better times, joy and despair. Abe has a secret he wants to tell, but will he?
I began reading J. Scaddon’s novella, The Life of Abe, in a few spare moments. Three hours later nothing else was done, but I knew whether or not Abe was prepared to trust me with his secret. If this book is an intentional plea for understanding and courtesy towards the disabled, it succeeds. Mr Scaddon does an incredible job of getting inside Abe’s body, mind and heart, and he achieves it with a gentle sense of fun most of the time. Boredom is impossible; before one subject is anywhere near exhausted he uses the ingenious hook “but more of that later.” Abe’s story is shocking, funny sometimes, and invariably entertaining. I loved Abe and felt I might see him or hear his voice at any moment, but every character, good or bad, lives like a visible Technicolor movie actor running on a screen in your head. This is a very different book, but try it and you won’t be disappointed.
