Summary: Brian Conaghan’s The Weight of a Thousand Feathers is about Bobby Seed, a seventeen-year-old carer. Bobby’s mother has multiple sclerosis, and her illness dictates Bobby’s life. He adores his mother, so he doesn’t mind putting everything second to his mom’s needs, but it’s still somewhat of a relief to get away to his young carers’ support group. But Bobby knows that they’re living on borrowed time: MS is a slow, incurable illness, and he knows that there’s only one way it can end.
Note: This review has spoilers. I’ve tried to talk around them as much as possible, but the most remarkable aspects of The Weight of a Thousand Feathers are apparent only after reading the whole thing.
Review: Bobby’s relationship with his mother and their relationship with her illness take up the forefront of the novel. There are plotlines more traditional to a YA novel present, but they are all aggressively sidelined by the more pressing matters. At first, when I finished the novel, I was conflicted by the storylines that aren’t really resolved. I’m used to fiction tying up pretty neatly, so it is jarring that The Weight of a Thousand Feathers doesn’t. Upon reflection, though, it would’ve been a disservice to end it any other way because Bobby’s story is realistic in all the worst ways. He should have a regular adolescence, but he doesn’t because his mom needs him too much; likewise, this could be a standard contemporary young adult novel, but those elements have to get out of the way because Mrs. Seed supersedes them. The reader can see the story this would’ve been if Bobby’s mom weren’t sick, but The Weight of a Thousand Feathers isn’t that story.
This is not a fun, chill summer book. It’s pretty depressing, and there are some really difficult moral questions. Some scenes are incredibly upsetting, and extremely conflicting. One character in particular is the type of character readers are conditioned to like. He’s had a hard past. He’s our protagonist’s love interest. He’s a little bit of a bad boy, but so many love interests in fiction are bad boys that we forget that bad boys are actually, well, bad. So when I realized that, no, all the red flags that usually turn out to be just quirks are, in fact, red flags… I was pleasantly surprised.
The Weight of a Thousand Feathers is an intense book but very affecting and very well-written. It’s a very somber read with great characters, and while the main plot doesn’t have a lot of surprises (thanks a lot, spoilery cover flap!), Conahan does some interesting, atypical things with his B-plots that make this novel a memorable one.
A/⭐⭐⭐⭐
gif credit here
A Blog of Books and Musicals 