Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts by Josie Shapiro.
Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts by Josie Shapiro.
Review by Louise Ward
Mickey Bloom is a wee slip of a thing, just about five feet tall, not great at reading and therefore a target for bullies. What she can do, though, is run. Once she finds how fleet of foot she is, all she wants to do is fly.
Mickey’s mother, Bonnie,has a lot on her plate with three older children and an academically recalcitrant Mickey. The kids’ father, Teddy, is a presence eagerly awaited, and the siblings hog his attention when he occasionally turns up. As a journalist, he is desperate for his children to be literate; Mickey is not and Teddy doesn’t understand her, going as far as to call her Michelle when no one else in the world does.
Mickey has to play every trick in the stubborn child’s book to get into the running club where she feels she belongs; lies by omission, outright lies and disobeying direct orders finds her at the club, beating kids in her field and above it, relying on a ragged pair of plimsolls and steely determination.
Mickey’s dreams begin to be realised – she is spotted by a well-renowned trainer, spirited off to Auckland and put through her training paces. And here’s where the dream begins to fail: she’s weighed, measured, pushed to the brink and, although she’s winning, is put under so much physical and psychological pressure that the cracks soon start to show.
There are important conversations at the heart of this book: letting children pursue the opportunities that are right for them; the pressure on young sportspeople that manifests in eating disorders and injury; the awful misogyny that means a female can’t just run, alone, in the dark (or sometimes at all) without fear, and how female athletes are judged on every aspect of their appearance.
The novel takes us through Mickey’s childhood and formative years and into adulthood, the narrative interspersed by chapters in which the present-day Mickey is competing in a marathon. The thrill of training to run fast, as well as the pain, are beautifully described throughout, and illustrate the strength of mind it takes to tackle many difficult things, not just running.
This debut novel is in the enviable position of having won the Allen & Unwin Prize for Fiction, an initiative to support New Zealand writers to get their work into print. Josie Shapiro already has some writing chops as a book reviewer and a holder of a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Auckland. She clearly knows what she’s doing. Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts releases on May 16th.
