SuitabookThe most important thing
Avi
- Reading
- Read one story at a time and pause after each to notice whose perspective is central. Compare how the boys interpret adults’ actions, while leaving room for the endings and moral judgements to differ.
- Themes
- Fatherhood and responsibility: Seven stories ask what fathers can do for their sons, including situations involving fathers at home, absent fathers and prospective stepfathers. The collection explores several possible forms of fatherly responsibility rather than establishing one universal answer.
- Family absence and change: The boys’ circumstances include fathers who have left, a grandfather newly met, and a mother considering marriage. Family change is presented through individual boys’ experiences, with emotional and relational consequences rather than a single stated judgement.
- Grief and difficult behaviour: Luke encounters his dead father’s ghost; another story involves a grandfather’s erratic behaviour, while a macho father is ashamed of his passive son. The book?s stance on this remains unclear.
- Worth knowing
- Some stories may need an emotionally attentive reader: the collection includes a dead father, an abandoned family, strained family relationships, shame and a grandfather whose behaviour is described as erratic.