Squinto swears to Erica he will never let another friend die like her on his watch. The messy love and the cycle of pain, the fun and the fears. The nuances of being native, being young, being part of both an indigenous community and a Town in the interior B.C (or anywhere, really). Grisenthwaite weaves the classic coming-of-age tale into a story of deep grief and longing for place, the unfair treatment of First Nations people, but also the heart and kinship of First Nation’s communities. This moment is bursting with possibility. ![]() There is a perfect moment when she tells Squito to “stop haunting death” when the reader understands the full circle of grief, love, and realizing there are some things we just have to accept and let be in the world. How could he be held responsible? I only wish Erica played a larger role in Squinto’s journey on the page. He believed her lie-going to meet her boyfriend, a picnic-and why not? He was just a kid and didn’t know there was a reason to not believe her. He is guilt ridden because he was the last to see her alive. She interrupts his “hot” dreams, reminding him to stay grounded, pay attention. He is not alone on this journey his cousin, Erica, who took her own life when he was nine, is with him. He harbours a responsibility that he barely understands. But here’s the twist, Squinto is both too old for his age and just a child at the same time. In their softer moments the boys are endearing with the appropriate fear and respect of their local waitress at the diner, their singing group they are all so proud of, and Squinto, a boy who wants to see his favourite band and have his first home waltz, a very simple request for a young man. This group of boys offers a glimpse into the complexities of being a native youth in a colonial system, deeply entwined within it and an outsider from it. If only they knew how true that really was. It is The Outsiders, The Wanderers, “The boys the boys” (“The Montague Boys” by Justin Warfield), the weekend that will change their lives and set the pace for who they will become. And on the surface, this is the tale: A group of teenage boys trying to make it to the dance of the year without being picked up by the cops, running out of booze or money, and maybe getting laid. Squinto describes Bimbo as “his worst friend” and his distaste for him is no secret, though it is misplaced as much as it is well-placed. ![]() Squinto, for his part, is second in line on the punching bag scale, joins in because if it’s Bimbo, then it’s not him. Bimbo, so desperate to be accepted, tolerates an intolerable amount of verbal abuse from the other boys. There is teasing and then there is I-hate-you-and-you-know-it-but-you-won’t-leave-me kind of teasing, which is often woven with a thick thread of I’m-hurting-but-don’t-understand-the-complexities-of-why-it-hurts kind of teasing. The first three are tied by the familial, cultural, and experiential but Bimbo is not part of the indigenous community and also from a family that moved to town when he was young so he’s not really a local and even more outside than the world of his friends. ![]() They have grown apart they just haven’t said good-bye. What we have here are a group of boys mostly together because they’re all they’ve got. ![]() The story revolves around fifteen-year-old Squinto (Bob) and his 4 friends: Skinny, Jim Jim, Cody, and Bimbo-friends being a very loose term to describe this group of misfits. Set in 1973, in a town near Kamloops B.C, Home Waltz by G.A Grisenthwaite is a typical coming of age story with a not so typical twist.
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