My Aunt Is a Pilot Whale

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.

The title of this award-winning book, originally published in Belgium,
may suggest to junior- and senior-high readers that they are about to
encounter a work of fantasy or possibly even humor. Instead, Provoost
deals with a most real and serious subject, the sexual abuse of
children. The narrator, Anna, is 9 when her likable Uncle Toni,
“crazy” Aunt Tanja, and their moody daughter, Tara, become neighbors
on the Cape Cod peninsula. Anna dislikes Tara immediately and resents
being forced to play with this “strange” cousin. Two shared events
cause the girls’ relationship to change: first, Tara’s depressed
mother commits suicide; second, the girls become involved in attempting
to rescue a pod of beached pilot whales. Following the pair’s viewing
of a TV movie about incest, Tara, in confidence, discloses to Anna that
her father has been sexually abusing her and that her mother had been
aware of his actions. Burdened by Tara’s horrible secret, Anna is
relieved when Petr’ Ann Jorssen, a biologist the girls encountered
earlier and herself a survivor of child sexual abuse, recognizes
Tara’s behaviors as signaling abuse and takes action.

The unusual title comes from the cousins’ attempt to discover reasons
for the whales’ beaching themselves and for Tanja’s suicide. Anna
concludes that, like the whales, “maybe she [Tanja] was lost too.”
While Provoost effectively communicates the damaging psychological
effects of sexual abuse, she skirts the abuser’s punishment. Though
the plot develops slowly and the central characters are younger than the
book’s intended audience, readers who persevere will find a good read.
Recommended.