Just Like February

A Novel

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Pub Date 10 Apr 2018 | Archive Date 27 Mar 2018

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Description

To Rachel, there’s no one in the world like her uncle Jake. Handsome and mysterious, he fills her with stories, sends postcards and gifts from exotic places. And he’s so much more fun to be with than her parents, who are always fighting. When she learns he’s gay, she keeps it under wraps. And when he gets sick, she doesn’t even tell her best friends. Until she realizes that secrecy does more harm than good.

Framed by the passions of the ’60s and the AIDS crisis of the ’80s, Just Like February begins with the wedding of Rachel’s parents when she’s five and ends with her sexual awakening as Jake is dying. As this poignant coming-of-age story unfolds, Rachel is forced to reckon with a home broken by the stormy love between her mother (a social worker) and her father (a Vietnam veteran) and a heart broken by the realities of homophobia and AIDS.

To Rachel, there’s no one in the world like her uncle Jake. Handsome and mysterious, he fills her with stories, sends postcards and gifts from exotic places. And he’s so much more fun to be with than...


Advance Praise

 

"Deborah Batterman's novel, Just Like February, is a remarkable achievement. Told through the eyes of Rachel, daughter of a flower child and a Vietnam veteran who can never quite decide if they want or like each other, Rachel comes of age caught in their seesawing relationship, and an extended family dominated by fierce grandmother Ruth and beloved uncle Jake. As Rachel grows, the novel becomes a deeply personal and beautifully detailed chronicle of the U.S. during three of its most unforgettable decades. Beginning in 1969, the time of the moon landing and Chappaquiddick, Just Like February moves through the lost ideals of the 1970s to the Reagan years, when Rachel's uncle becomes a victim of the AIDS epidemic. Few novels are able to capture so well the truth of James Baldwin's observation that "the individual is history writ small." Just Like February is a funny, compelling, and heartbreaking read.”

 Suzanne Paola Antonetta, author of Make Me a Mother: A Memoir and editor ofBellingham Review


"Just like February is a wonderful novel, beautifully told, that vividly captures the sweet love of a young girl for her charismatic uncle. Deborah Batterman has a light touch with tough issues in this poignant coming-of-age story. A brave heroine, who finds her own strength even as her family is falling apart, Rachel Cohen will steal your heart.”

 Celine Keating, author of Play for Me and Layla


"Just like February is a chronicle of love, family, heartbreak and healing, jam-packed with warmth and humor. Deborah Batterman’s portrayals of the lives and travails of her characters are so clear-eyed, so perceptive and poetic, that this reader hated to see the story end.”

 Rossandra White, author of Monkey’s Wedding and Loveyoubye


"A beautifully told account of a young woman finding her way in “that barbed-wire netherworld called growing up.” In the course of this short but richly-textured novel, Rachel Cohen grows from an observant five-year-old into a clear-eyed but sensitive teenager. She has few illusions about her slightly off-kilter family, which includes a much-loved gay uncle, a warm but sharp-tongued grandmother, and parents caught up in the sexual revolution as it rambles from Woodstock to the age of AIDS. Through it all, Rachel’s distinctive voice offers her evolving understanding of the world and herself.”

— Bruce Shenitz, former executive editor of Out Magazine

 

"Deborah Batterman's novel, Just Like February, is a remarkable achievement. Told through the eyes of Rachel, daughter of a flower child and a Vietnam veteran who can never quite decide if they want...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781943006489
PRICE US$16.95 (USD)

Average rating from 6 members


Featured Reviews

Beautifully written. Covering the years of early 70's through the eyes of a young woman, Rachael Cohen. Rachael adores her gay uncle, Jake, who falls victim to AIDS. An off kilter family, as one might label today as "dysfunctional. Her father is a Vietnam veteran and her mother a true flower child. Ruling is the very opinionated Grandmother. A poignant story about love and tears during the late 60's and 70's. The author, Deborah Batterman has created a book to be remembered. Publication date is April 10, 2018.

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<blockquote> <i> 'It was the first Sunday in September 1974, and we were all so happy, and never never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that ten years and eight months later my parents would separate, and never never in my darkest dreams could I imagine I would one day be driving along the parkway, windows open to a cruel breeze that would take me from the edge of harmony to a cold, flat reality. "Jake is gone," I hear myself say. Jake is gone.' </i> </blockquote>

<i> Just Like February </i> follows five year old Rachel as her parents (her mother a pacifist social worker, her father a Vietnam veteran) are finally married, through the dramas of young girlhood, friendship, family drama, and sexual awakening. Through all of this is the figure of Jake, her uncle and her idol, an avid traveller and artist who falls ill and dies from AIDS just as Rachel comes of age.

This book was simply beautiful, the writing was incredible and Batterman did a stellar job of evoking the precipice that was the 70s /80s, with the remnants of the free and wild 60s sparring with the crises of the 80s. The family is at the heart of this novel, and the relationships between the characters are so tender, even during times of tension. Rachel's grandmother is a particularly brilliant character, strong-willed and traditional, with an undying love for her family manifesting itself in rituals and obsessive behaviours like earthquake watching.

<blockquote> <i> 'For my grandmother, comfort was sitting at the kitchen table, reading through newspapers in the hope of finding that one headline, that one new bit of scientific trivia, that would confirm, or at least shed light on, something she thought she knew.' </i> </blockquote>

There's no denying that Rachel's grandmother is the cornerstone of the family, but I was impressed by how well her children's relationships were also depicted, as sometimes when reading a book through the eyes of a child, it can be difficult to see the characters in other ways aside from 'mother' 'uncle' 'grandmother'. But Rachel's mother, Jake, George, and Vivian were shown in private relation to one another as well, and these dimensions really made the novel bloom beyond what I expected.

The novel is partially epistolary, which was another beautiful dimension to the storytelling, ranging from postcards and gifts from Jake on his travels, to letters between Rachel and her friend Laura towards the end of the book, after their sudden falling out. This close relationship was another star in the novel for me, depicted so tenderly and believably and exploring how friendships strengthen and survive through all the odds, and how they can splinter apart in seconds, and the tentative ways those splinters can be salvaged and stuck back together again.

<blockquote> <i> I dug a little harder, watched the faint imprint of my fingernails disappear with each breath. Laura's cheek was resting on the backs of her hands, and her eyes were closed, and she had the smile of a good dream on her face. She yawned and lifted her head, and together we climbed under the covers, tossing and turning, following each other's sleepy voices in the dark, tugging at opposite ends of the blanket until it encased us like a cocoon, and then, out of restlessness or curiosity or both, we held each other close, giggling and trying to get a sense of what it was that excited boys.' </i> </blockquote>

I absolutely love the way the novel is situated in places. Time seems endless and slippery in the novel, jumping from age to age and with the values of different times all converging on the other, but Batterman describes place with such beauty and brevity that you always feel anchored in the events, even if they feel like a fairy story through the eyes of a young child.

<blockquote> <i> 'A place where people once made paintings right on rock, and if you stood very still, Jake said, you could feel the colors and taste the marsh and smell the kookaburra before you heard it and believe, for a minute or two or three, that you were on the very edge of time. This very week, this very day, this very hour, Jake might be admiring a rock painting or weaving his way through the Great Barrier Reef or boating down a river in search of crocodiles while I, halfway around the world, dreamed of sugar roses and white lace and tried very hard to understand how forty-four days could simultaneously pass so swiftly and so slowly.' </i> </blockquote>

The overriding theme of the novel is hope, constant hope that things will turn out for the best, that through all of the trials and tribulations within the family, and through illness, things will get better. And while Jake's illness is terrible and brief, and the injustice continues beyond the ending of the book, for this family Batterman executes a satisfying, world-aware and bittersweet ending.

<blockquote> <i> At 11:39:13 a.m., the </i> Challenger <i> is off the ground, gone in a puff of smoke four seconds later. [...] I think about Jake, too, up there, the astronaut he once wanted to be. And if he had been up there, he would have died, it would have been fast, he would be a hero.' </i> </blockquote>

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Beautifully written and engrossing. Definitely recommend.

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