Real Life by Adeline Dieudonne

Author : Adeline Dieudonne
Title : Real Life
Published : 2018
Publisher  : World Editions
Pages : 240
Genre : Contempary Lititure

     At home, there are four bedrooms: one for her, one for her little brother Sam, one for her parents, and one for the carcasses. Her father is a big-game hunter, a powerful predator, and her mother is submissive to her violent husband's demands. The young narrator spends the days with Sam, playing in the shells of cars dumped for scrap and listening out for the melody of the ice-cream truck until a brutal accident shatters their world.

     Real Life is a book that I genuinely don't remember adding to my to be read pile. But I suppose that can be said of a great many on there. But at some point, this book intrigued me enough to add to it. Over the last few years, there have been a great many books within this sub-genre. Mostly told from the perspective of young girls struggling to deal with living in an abusive family environment. It is a reality faced by so many, so I feel if you are going to fictionalize it then it needs to be done with the utmost care and consideration. With this in mind and never having read anything by this author before so I was unsure as to how she would tackle such a subject. Could she deliver a book that didn't simply really on shock factor to tell a story of this girl? 

     Throughout the course of the narrative, we are locked inside the head of our unnamed hero. She shows us what we need to know to understand the reality of her life. From the mundane to things that made me cringe and want to shy away from what she lives through. Her farther the central point in her small universe. A black hole sucking in everything that should be good and distorting it into something far more sinister Throughout the course of the book we see her struggling to pull away from this man all the while trying her best to protect her other family members. This house is one that appears to be in constant conflict, all due to one man's need for control pushed to the darkest edge of human reason. 

     Dieudonne has taken her time within these pages to craft a narrative that feels very real. There was at no point a time when these characters become caricatures in the hopes of hammering home a message. We witness how one mans poisonous view of the world seeps out into each of these people. He maneuvers them to his own ends without a second thought for their own feelings. But our unnamed hero dose all she can to fight against this. It is through these passages that this author shows us little moments of triumph and hope. Or when we see her just being able to be a girl of her age carefree without the fear of what is to come next. What I mean by all this is that the author finds a careful balance in her work. Whilst overall this is a book that shines a light on the dark side of what a childhood should always be. I was never left feeling completely beaten down by the experience fo Our hero's story. 

     In comparison to other books I have read that are similar to this, the book is short only spanning two hundred and forty pages. But for me, it contained everything I would be looking for. It pushed me to deal with a great deal of different emotions towards each of the characters I came across. Yes, it made me angry at times when you want to jump in between our lead and the harm that is being direct at her. It also gave me occasion to smile a few times in those moments when she was left to be herself free of the ties that bound her. A nuanced work that whilst working to its own rhythm shone brightly in something that could have been too bleak but yet remains close to real life