A Seven Letter Word
Summary:
Finlay is having a difficult time: his mother disappeared without telling anyone where she was going two years ago, and his relationship with his father has been difficult since. Finlay’s stammer is getting worse and worse since his mother disappeared, to the point where it is difficult to communicate. Finlay’s love for scrabble, a game he and his mother used to play, keeps him going and he meets a new friend Alex, online, and a new friend in real life Maryam, through scrabble. The mystery of his mother’s disappearance deepens, but Finlay begins to think that perhaps scrabble can lead him to find his mother again.
Edited by: Dublin City University
Comment:
This novel focuses on a young boy’s struggles to communicate – literally, through his speech impediment which prevents him from articulating his thoughts and feelings, but also through the exploration of the different types of communication that comprise our relationships with others, with animals, and with the world. The novel takes the form of Finlay’s diary, interspersed with letters to his mother, and reveals his frustration with the world that sees him as lacking because of his stammer. Though Finlay is positioned as the character with communication issues, the biggest of these issues in the novel is his father’s refusal to communicate with his son over the difficulty of his mother’s disappearance. Much of their communication difficulties at first seem to centre on Finlay’s father’s lack of understanding of his son, whom he compares negatively against how he was himself as a boy, comparisons made along stereotypically gendered lines. Finlay’s bond with Maryam is also centred on their experience of difference. Maryam is bullied because of her Pakistani background and because she wears a headscarf. There is a sensitive exploration about how their differences – Finaly’s speech impediment and Maryam’s race – both lead to a stifling of their voices in different ways.