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Eleven year-old Jamie is preoccupied with memory and forgetting. He lives with his mother and his amnesic aunt, Sapphy, in Wondrous Acres trailer park, having moved there after his father took off with the cashier at the MicroMart, and his aunt was struck in the head by a big metal pipe in the cherry canning factory where she worked. Sapphy can remember everything about her life before the accident, but cannot form new memories so that each day she must be told again about her accident, and why Jamie and his mother have come to stay. Jamie and his mother work hard to stimulate Sapphy’s memory, offering her sniffs of spices and playing her favourite records in hope of finding that ‘magic trigger’, the one that will help her memory to jump over the scratch.
Jamie wants to learn to forget. He longs to put behind him memories of his life in Battle Creek before his cat, Mister, died, and his dad took off. He longs to forget what happened in the trailer park manager’s office on Christmas Eve. And he longs to stop feeling that he is responsible for all the bad things that have happened to him. During the day, Jamie pushes his memories “down, deep inside, and [tries] as hard as [he can] to forget it. [He keeps his] mouth shut, and [is] careful not to look people in the eye. .” At night, he retreats behind a protective circle of empty cherry cans, a kind of early-warning device he erects around his bed.
Jumping the Scratch is the story of two individuals who must find the ‘magic trigger’ to break out of their past and in the future. For Sapphy, who has taken a blow to the head, it is simply a matter of trying every stimulus until the right key if found. For Jamie, rocked by blows to his personal life, it is rather more complicated. With his father gone, and his mother preoccupied by Sapphy’s illness and her own personal difficulties, Jamie finds himself without an ear that will listen.
Sarah Weeks has written a sensitive and beautiful story about some very difficult issues. Well worth the read for mature readers.
FernFolio Editor