Ginny Moon

It's been a long time since I said the name LeBlanc with my mouth. Because that's what my name used to be. It's like I left the original behind when I came to live with my Forever Parents. With Brian and Maura Moon. My name is Ginny Moon now but there are still parts of the original me left.

Ginny Moon is the story of a 13 (then 14) year old girl with autism who was removed from her abusive mother at nine, and who then spent years in the foster system before finding her Forever Home; but being adopted doesn't mean that Ginny can forget what happened before Forever, and as no one for the past five years has understood just what she left behind in the suitcase under her bed, Ginny will never stop trying to find her way back to it. Author Benjamin Ludwig is not only an English and Writing teacher, but he and his wife adopted a teenager with autism: On all matters relating to how Ginny speaks and thinks and interacts, as on all matters from an adoptive parent's point-of-view, I'll defer to Ludwig's experience. As it is, Ginny's quirky voice would be familiar to anyone who has read The Curious Incident of the Dog at Midnight or The Rosie Project, but I found this storyline to be really upsetting – in a way that both compelled me to keep reading and made me stop frequently, take a deep breath, and ask, “Why is it playing out this way?” The plot is interesting and certainly not predictable, and while I tend to applaud any book that can draw an emotional response from me, this book may have been too upsetting for me to call enjoyable. I can't avoid light spoilers beyond this point.

As the book begins, Ginny has been settled into the Blue House for two years, and as her Forever Mom and Forever Dad are expecting their first baby, they have given Ginny an electronic doll to care for. When the doll's sensors reveal that Ginny has been hitting and shaking and attempting to suffocate it to stop it from crying, her adoptive parents become justifiably alarmed. When Ginny then attempts to contact her Birth Mother – who breaks a restraining order in an effort to see Ginny again – the Forever Parents begin to wonder if having Ginny (who they have adopted) in the house will be safe once the baby arrives; Forever Mom becomes cold and distant, while Forever Dad's stress levels cause him to take a sabbatical from work as a high school Guidance Counselor. Events happen (I am trying to keep the spoilers light) and Ginny's Birth Dad (who hasn't seen his daughter since she was first born) makes contact. The Moons decide to let him visit with Ginny – if it goes well, maybe she can spend some time with him to give them a respite; maybe the respite will become permanent. And I was really upset by this point: they adopted Ginny and were looking to get rid of her once she became an inconvenience? (I do appreciate Ludwig's honesty in exposing an ugly side to the happily-ever-after adoption story, but once the Mom became abusive and the Dad was too sick to intervene, this was hard on my heart.) In a way, I was almost hoping that Rick, the Birth Dad, would be able to take Ginny away:

I just wish someone would talk about what a delightful young lady she is. Maybe say how funny and smart she can be. With all of this talk about keeping people safe and taking rests, it's like we're trying to put her in a box. We're trying to keep her apart from everything. I'm no psychologist, but I think what she needs is to be closer to people.

But once Rick lets slip that he thinks it would be good for Ginny to spend some time with her Birth Mom (who is now clean and sober and desperate for a visit), the Moons send him away, never to visit again, and they begin looking into institutionalised care for Ginny; anything to get her out of their house. I was devastated by this point. And meanwhile, Ginny has become fixated on the idea of finding her Birth Mom again – as the only way to go back to the time before Forever and find what was left behind – and she's so unattached to the people that were supposed to be her Forever Parents that she starts calling them Brian and Maura instead of Dad and Mom; her behaviour at school becoming so erratic that, not knowing what's going on inside Ginny's troubled mind, everyone seems to agree that she'd be best off at a home for girls. Again, events happen, but not the way that Ginny hopes:

There's nothing for me this side of Forever and there's nothing for me on the other side either. I'm not Ginny LeBlanc anymore and I don't know how to be Ginny Moon. My Baby Doll doesn't need me. No one needs me at the Blue House. I don't belong anywhere anymore.

Because I am (-Ginny).

I'm guessing this is what it feels like to be a ghost. Or not to have a face. No one knows me and I don't even have a house or a car or a suitcase to hide in.

So, I'm bawling at that point, and although Ludwig provides an ending not long after, it can't be satisfying because I don't want to empathise with the Moons: they adopted Ginny, made a commitment to a young girl who needed safety and stability, and they decided to back out of their promise of Forever. It would take a kind of strength that I don't know to have adopted Ginny in the first place – she has endless self-imposed-rules and quirks and autism-linked behaviours that needed to be accommodated even before a baby was introduced – and as Ludwig has lived this situation, I have no doubt that he's being completely upfront that it is hard and there are stretches of self-doubt and maybe even regret on the part of the parents, but I couldn't help but resent that so much of the storyline involved the Moons trying to find a way to send Ginny away. I guess I just wanted Ginny to have a different story.

Ginny's quirky voice and thought-processes were completely believable – there are some funny moments that don't feel like cheap laughs (I especially liked Larry; the lovesick, surfer-ballad-singing boy with Cerebral Palsy) – and it's probably the fact that Ludwig made her so real that I felt genuine resentment on Ginny's behalf. I read this book quickly – too invested in Ginny not to learn what becomes of her – but I still can't say that I liked it. I want to give it four stars anyway.