The Petty Details of So-and-So's Life

June M. Blurton is a retired speech/language pathologist.

Em and Blue grow up in Niagara Falls in the 1950s in a dysfunctional
home. Their contacts with the outside world are equally unsatisfying and
they cling to one another on the playground at school and in their damp
basement, playing games and inventing a secret language. Their father,
Oliver, has given up his job as an architect in favour of inventing
unsalable gadgets until their mother gets fed up and he leaves.

Elaine provides a home for the children, but they learn not to ask
questions because she has no satisfactory answers. They have to find
their own way through adolescence and young adulthood, burdened with
anger and trying to cope with their past in different ways. Blue
desperately tries to find his father, who, in the downward path his life
has taken, “look[s] like the disheveled relative of a human.” Em
does the opposite. She rejects her background and tries to reinvent
herself, giving herself a new name, temporarily, and becoming an
archaeology student.

The story itself is not new. It is the way in which the petty details
are presented that makes this such a readable book. It features unusual
images (e.g., “the words had stayed lodged in his stomach), touching
and funny situations, and well-defined, sympathetic characters.