Review: “A Song Called Home,” by Sara Zarr

A Song Called Home, by Sara Zarr, follows Lou, a fifth-grader whose Mom is getting remarried to Steve, who she’s been dating for a year after having divorced Lou’s father, an alcoholic, two years prior. Both she and her 15-year-old sister Casey are against this; it will mean leaving the apartment where they’ve lived all of their lives, leaving the city to move to the suburbs, and leaving their school and all of their friends. On her birthday, she receives a guitar that she assumes to be from her father, who she only rarely has contact with, and decides to learn to play it to impress him.

I absolutely adored this book. Lou feels real and complex and like an actual 11 year old who is just trying to cope with her entire life changing. She’s sweet and loves her mom and sister and doesn’t fully understand what’s happening with the adults around her sometimes. She’s been through a lot of trauma related to her father’s alcoholism, which leads to her dissociating frequently, as well as some amount of kleptomania; while I can’t speak to the representation of the dissociation, it was treated very naturally. She definitely needs some sort of therapy though, so I’d like to imagine that she gets that after the book ends.

Lou’s relationships with her family members were some of the most interesting aspects of the book. She and Casey, while going through the same experience, respond to it very differently (likely largely driven by the age difference between them), and their parallel character development is done very well. Lou looks up to her sister a lot, so Casey’s actions have a large impact on her own growth. Lou’s relationship with her mom, while not perfect, is definitely one of the largest sources of stability in her life. Her growing relationship with Steve, her stepfather, is particularly intriguing, especially since it is very representative of her adjustment to all of the change in her life as a whole. The progression of that relationship is done very well and feels completely natural. Lou’s relationship with her own father is more complicated, since, because he’s only there for a couple scenes in the book, it is mostly her engaging with her idea of him, and particularly with her idea of what she wishes he were like, and over the course of the book she gradually has to come to terms with the fact that she can’t force him to change and that hoping he’ll become the idealized parent that she envisions in her head isn’t healthy for her, which is another evolution that Zarr develops very well.

The book is primarily dealing with the idea of change; it is present in every aspect of the plot. It’s a story of a young girl figuring out how to react and adapt to large changes in her life that she can’t control, and learning how to adjust to a life that is significantly different from that which she’s always had. As somebody who has a large fear of change myself, I empathized a lot with Lou in that aspect, and a lot of the parts that were particularly painful for her in that aspect felt painful to me too. That fear and Lou’s learning how to deal with it was absolutely my favorite part of the book, and is what I believe to be the most well-written aspect of it.

Additionally, despite the book dealing with a lot of heavy topics, most notably Lou’s father’s alcoholism and its effects on her, it is ultimately heartwarming and uplifting.

I honestly can’t think of a single bad thing to say about this book; I adored reading it. The pacing was perfect, the structure worked wonderfully, the characters were lovable, and I don’t have a single complaint.

I’m giving this book an enthusiastic five stars. I would recommend A Song Called Home to anybody of any age who loves character-driven stories or just wants to read a wonderfully-written contemporary book about change. It’s a poignant story of a fifth-grader learning how to cope with change and adjust to a new environment. The progression of the book feels very natural, and the reader is empathizing with and rooting for Lou every step of the way. It’s about creating new families and new friendships and embracing changes that happen for the better, as well as accepting and letting go of that which you can’t control; it’s amazing and I can’t recommend it enough.