Kathleen is a 16-year-old girl whose world gets shook when it is learned that her mother will be returning home after 9 years in a mental health facility. Her mother, Helen, suffered from depression which made her unable to handle the responsibilities of adulthood. After she was institutionalized her father's childhood friend, Alma, came to them as a housekeeper and helped raise Kathleen and her brother Gregory, or Whimpy as he is better known as.
Kathleen does not want her mother to come home because she likes how her life currently is and she does not want to deal with her mother's mental illness which she assumes is still rampant despite Dr. Lundigan's insistence that she is cured.
After her arrival Kathleen struggles to treat her mother as a normal person and accept Alma's withdrawal from the family.
Kathy and her best friend, Margie, begin spending a lot of time with two boys named Bruce and Swede. Bruce has been the target of Kathleen's adoration since they were children so it's hard for her to witness him and Margie take up with each other while she gets tossed to shy and awkward Swede.
After Dr. Lundigan visits the family Kathleen realizes how little she has done to help her mother and fears that she will be taken back to the hospital or removed from their family permanently. She starts to help her mother adjust to family life and build a bond with her.
After Margie and Bruce have a fight he makes a play for Kathy and she realizes she likes the idea of Bruce much more that the actual him, and that Swede is what she wishes Bruce was.
- Kathleen's mother's illness is attributed to her "inability to accept maturity" which means she refuses to give up things she enjoys that are considered for teenagers only such as playing tennis, playing piano, and wearing teen fashions. By these standards I would be institutionalized too. I'm a firm believer that age is just a number when it comes to fashion, hobbies, etc. and I think it's ridiculous and ageist that people, specifically women, are forced to look and act a certain way based on their age, and then demeaned for being "old".
- Also I found it a little frustrating that playing tennis is considered a sign of mental illness yet things like Helen being post-partum when her condition got much worse is never taken into account. It also glosses over Helen struggling with the death of both her parents and just focuses on "she doesn't want to be an adult, she wants to play tennis".
- It never says if Swede is actually from Sweden. Bruce introduces him as being new in town but from where he doesn't say. Kathy asks him if the nickname Swede bothers him and he says no, the same way a man from Texas doesn't mind being called Tex. I always enjoy books that have students from other countries since I grew up in an area with a lot of immigrants and a lot of my friends in school came from other countries. It makes the stories more realistic to me.
- This was made into a TV movie in 1982 called Memories Never Die. I watched the first 15 minutes on YouTube but wasn't really interested. The movie is a bit different, it is from the viewpoint of the mother who returns to her family after the father becomes ill and has to deal with her family and the housekeeper being hostile towards her. It seems much more dramatic than the book.
Overall it was a nice book. I don't have too much to comment on as it was very similar to other books from the time that focus on a teenage girl. The mental health angle was interesting but kind of ruined by the focus of enjoying tennis being a symptom of mental illness and things like that.
