Not Nothing
The boy is 12 years old. He has no father, a mentally ill mother, an uncaring aunt and uncle, a bad attitude, anger management issues, and “something bad” in his past. He feels that he is of no value. Nothing. His name is barely mentioned until the final pages.
He is assigned by the judge to volunteer full time for the summer at the Shady Glen Retirement Home, a place he says, “smells like death”. But he accidentally knocks down a picture in the room of Joseph (Josey) Kravitz, a 107-year-old man who has not spoken in five years. The old man breaks his silence to tell the boy about the woman in the picture and the story of Jewish people in Poland during the Nazi occupation.
The two become friends, and the boy also becomes friends with other seniors in the Home and with Maya-Jade, another young volunteer. Maya-Jade, borderline bossy, is far from “nothing” and believes she can make a difference. The two stories, Josey’s and the boy’s, intertwine. Josey’s very personal memories of the Jewish ghetto in Krakow and the concentration camp at Plaszow are juxtaposed with the boy’s struggle to escape his nothingness.
This novel says a great deal about inter-generational friendships as well as about the capacity of one person to influence and change another despite differences in age, religion, nationality, and family issues. The author has a sure touch with characters both youthful and aged. She demonstrates this by showing the self-confident Maya-Jade uniting with the hair-trigger boy to reconnect a dementia patient with his dearest friend. Later, Josey and the other seniors help the boy.
This is a novel that brings history forward to touch a new generation and remind us that history, too, is ‘not nothing’.
