Mathilda Savitch

Victor Lodato's debut novel, Mathilda Savitch, is challenging to describe.  Thankfully, I have plenty of experience with young teens, otherwise the stream of consciousness teen narration would have been incomprehensible.

Mathilda's older sister Helene has died in a horrible train accident.  Her parents are barely surviving the loss of their eldest child.  Mathilda has been lost in the shuffle.  She decides the best way to get their attention is to behave badly.  Mathilda is also convinced that Helene was pushed to her death.  Mathilda snoops through Helene's things in an effort to discover the murderer.

The novel follows Mathilda's various attempts at bad behavior and the discoveries about her sister.  There are many parts of the novel that seem to be added just for shock value, rather than adding to the plot.  While the character of the mother is somewhat developed, there is little development to the father.  Most disappointingly is the promise of a great risk as described by the summary on the back of the novel.  I was rather let down.  I imagined much more to this story.

I did, however, enjoy Mathilda's quirkiness.  She is quite a spitfire!  Overall, an interesting story that has a bit of a coming-of-age feeling to it, but not quite the mystery or humor I expected.