In her newest novel in verse, Meg Eden Kuyatt again writes from personal experience to create her protagonist Valeria, aka V. Describing herself as possessing a “neuro-spicy brain,” V considers art her superpower, a key survival mechanism: “the one thing I know to do to help me survive the summer with Jojo. So even if I don’t know how just yet, I’ll find a way to paint my own reality” (14).
With The Girl in the Walls targeted to middle-grade readers, Kuyatt takes on the topic of generational neurodivergence and describes how various characters employ their coping mechanisms. V hasn’t yet discovered the beauty in her difference, seeing her autism as weird. “When you’re weird and there aren’t many of you, you feel like an endangered species” (91). So, when V hears whispers and knocking on the walls of Grandma Jojo’s house and sees shadows, she wonders what secrets the house holds. After all, her mother admits that Jojo can be difficult but tells her daughter to give Jojo a chance, explaining that all humans have layers. “No one is any one thing. We all have ugly and lovely parts. You’ve seen one layer of Jojo, but I hope this summer you’ll look for more. You might be surprised at what you find” (16).
What V finds is that Jojo is a stickler on keeping up appearances, on worrying about what others think, an approach to life that V considers “fake and shallow.” So, when she encounters the girl in the wall, which represents a manifestation of her own insecurities–those parts she hides away–, the pair gang up to get revenge on Jojo. The outcome is not as satisfying as V imagines it can be.
In the process of exploring the messiness of being human, Kuyatt touches on key points about how feelings are not always reliable narrators. “Feelings are powerful. Mom says that’s why they make dangerous drivers. If they take over everything, . . . you can lose control and often someone gets hurt in the process” (99). Kuyatt also reminds readers of the danger in feeding off approval from others.
Another valid point Kuyatt makes regards the human tendency for masking: “Dressing like everyone else, wearing a smile, making eye contact—it all makes me think of how people like me mask to blend in and get through this strange Wonderland world” (186). Eventually, with some enlightenment from her cousin Cat who is a maker of art called assemblage, V learns that she can be two things at once, both strange and wonderful. “That’s what I love about assemblage—the pieces I assemble remind me we are all made of possibilities of what can be and what we can do, that even broken, ugly things can be remade into something new and beautiful” (274).
- Donna