National Network for Equitable Library Service

A heartfelt and quirky look at growing up mixed-race in 1990s Calgary, viewed through the lens of the irrepressible Grace. The strange interests of Grace and her mother Belinda, ufology and undersea life respectively, do not overshadow the human kindness and love that suffuses this novel. Half-Asian teenager Grace (but she'd prefer it if you called her "Gray" instead) is not a perfect little supermom-in-the-making like her older sister Jessica, and would rather become a marine biologist than a mother?although she does understand how to take care of her peculiar kid brother Squid better than anyone else in her family. When her mother Belinda abruptly runs out on her family and flies across the Atlantic in order to study crop circles in the English countryside, Grace is left alone to puzzle out her life, the world, and her unique place within it. With a warmth and a boisterous sense of humour reminiscent of Miriam Toews' A Complicated Kindness and Peter Hedges' What's Eating Gilbert Grape? author Corinna Chong introduces us to two lovable and thoroughly original female characters: persnickety, precocious Grace, and her impractical, impulsive mother Belinda - very different women who nevertheless persistently circle back into each other's hearts.