Brad's Universe

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

For 14-year-old Brad Greaves, certainty and order are to be found in
science (especially astronomy) and not in people (particularly his
parents). As Brad explains, “No wonder science and the stars attracted
him. They did not hurt each other.” When the book begins, Brad’s
father, Desmond, is about to return to his wife and son in Camden,
Alberta, a rural community to which Brad and his mother, Una, had
relocated from Saskatoon just six months earlier. According to Una,
Desmond has spent the last year in a mental-health facility recovering
from an emotional breakdown, apparently not his first. Desmond’s
arrival completely transforms the Greaves’s home life. Everything must
seemingly revolve around Desmond’s incessant demands and whims, with
Una acting as both placator and mediator. Brad, who desperately seeks
his musician father’s approval, receives instead Desmond’s
indifference and, more often, his biting scorn. Brad also desires to
know about the family’s past, something both parents avoid discussing.


Woodbury does an excellent job of disguising almost to the very end the
secret that explains both Desmond’s and Una’s behaviors. (A second
reading reveals a trail of “clues” that point to Desmond having been
a child molester who used his piano teaching as a means of access to
young males.) While Woodbury’s adult characters are particularly
strong, some of Brad’s adolescent acquaintances are more types than
genuine young adults. Recommended.