With humor, poignancy and a keen insight into human nature and family dynamics, Hilary McKay (The Exiles; Saffy's Angel) moves in with the Cornwallises as they relocate to the seashore in the wake of three deaths.
Everything was so great when Binny (short for Belinda) Cornwallis was eight. She had her father and her mother; her older sister, Clem; her baby brother, James; and Max, her wonderful border collie. Then her father dies, the family goes bankrupt and moves to a dingy tiny apartment, and Max goes to live with Granny. Next Granny's health goes, and Aunty Violet comes back from Spain to send Max away. Just when it couldn't get any worse, Granny dies, and Aunty Violet says--at Granny's funeral--that deaths " come in threes... who's next!" Binny has tried and tried to be polite, but she loses it then: "You should be dead, not Granny.... I wish you were." And, in true McKay tradition, Aunty Violet does die.
McKay follows Binny's family as they make over their lives in a seaside cottage that Aunty Violet has left them. Binny continues to probe the mystery of what happened to Max. Gareth, the archnemesis next door ("For Binny it had happened the way some people become friends.... Only it was not friends; it was enemies"), distracts Binny from the rhythms of family life and challenges her in new ways. And while this relationship as a framing structure sometimes calls attention to itself, McKay's characters command readers' full attention. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness