I read this because I was fascinated by the concept of a parent homeschooling and having experiencing homeschool lite during Covid. This memoir offers a glimpse into one boy's experience homeschooling and then re-integrating into school for High School. It isn't really about homeschooling though as much as it is about the complex relationship that he had with his mother - which at points made me absolutely cry.
At 8, Stefan Block moves with his mom, older brother and dad from Indiana to Plano, Texas. He calls Plano an "almost perfect nowhere," which I wouldn't know about not having ever been to Texas let alone Plano. It seemed that the decision to homeschool Stefan was based upon very effervescent and fluffy reasons and, when he finally was homeschooled, there was very little oversight into what was actually being taught to him. He did math, which was his only structured subject, but then, essentially left to his own devices. Having said that, the decision to homeschool seemed to be also based upon his mother's own dark and tragic and, quite frankly, sad history. At some point, it fell to Stefan to end the homeschooling experiment and break his mother's heart.
What I LOVED about this book is that it is told from the child's perspective and Block doesn't try to correct what is obviously a child's observations with his own now adult wisdom. It was almost painful to watch him adapt to his mom on an almost daily basis as any child would and to read him describe that sort of mental gymnastic. It wasn't until Block was an adult that he could fully grasp that her life and his were shaped by a fear so powerful it became destiny. And yet, he didn't reject her. At all. Instead, he loved her fiercely and showed us that love by writing this memoir that told her story alongside his.
So good. It is one of the few books that actually made me cry.
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