The Boy, the Devil and Divorce

Rating:
Summary: A ten year old makes divorce work for himself & parents.
Review: Ten-year old Justin hires the meanest lawyer on television to prevent his parents from divorcing not just themselves but him, too. "Divorced children" at his school share strategies for lessening pain. Justin's parents, successful yuppies, love Justin and work reasonably well together to do the same things for him after divorce as before. But the parents love their jointly designed Ne Hampshire home at least as much as they do Justin, and he senses this. He constructs a box home for his pet worm: an act variously accounted for by a psychiatrist, lawyers and judges. In juvenile court the point is made that, in divorcing each other, the parents are ruining Justin's life. This argument complicates parallel proceedings in divorce court. Justin's lawyer, cynical, hardboiled foe of marriage and all its works, Boston-based Weld Pennyworth works with a cast of male and female judges and lawyers to give Justin power over his parents. The divorced kids at Justin's school form and promote on TV "N.O.K.",the National Organization of Kids, to promote kids' rights. Through working with another court-appointed guardian ad litem, Pennyworth unblocks memories of his own "divorce" at age eight and probes new dimensions of love, marriage and fidelity. As he had recommended to his young client, lawyer Pennyworth becomes "fearless." Richard Frede uses divorce as the setting of a tautly crafted morality play which explores "children's rights." Don't be surprised if you read the book straight through at one sitting. The story moves rapidly and does not overwhelm with lawyerly detail about grey areas of child law, courtroom procedure and the quaint and quirky mores of lawyers. Make a leap of faith that parents can be vastly less mature than their ten year old child and that they can place personal pride and love of possessions above their son's welfare and the surprising climax follows inexorably from the premises.