My Amazon and Goodreads review of Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (Rating 5) – Burning Children as Burning Bush? What will become of ten-year-old twins, their mother dead, unwanted by grandparents, and ignored by a rich and politically powerful father, now remarried, who rejected them years ago? In Kevin Wilson’s Nothing to See Here, the girl and boy are further handicapped by a genetic affliction whereby they spontaneously combust. The fire doesn’t harm them, but incinerates whatever else it touches. Enter twenty-eight-year-old Lillian, a poor but smart layabout, called on by the twins’ stepmother to look after them. Despite the children’s fanciful condition, the novel is a realistic examination of what it means to be a parent. What is the metaphor here? Do the burning twins represent the rage within all children, adults too, for the injustices committed by their parents? This book has no good ones. Parents are absent, indifferent, manipulative, or downright cruel. But that interpretation is too facile. A better analogy of something that burns without being consumed is the Burning Bush in Exodus. Moses alone sees it. A reluctant leader, he is nevertheless asked by God to deliver his People from slavery to the Promised Land. Moses accomplishes the impossible because he has faith. Not blind faith; he is full of doubt, especially self-doubt. Yet Moses stumbles along because God chose him and besides, who else will do it? So it is with Lillian. After a lifetime of messing up, she has no reason to believe she can take care of these damaged children. Yet, Lillian has the passion and guts to try, without deluding herself that she’ll do a perfect job. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I was impressed by Wilson’s ability to make the bizarre believable, and the insurmountable attemptable, the very skills that parenthood demands.
