Manybooks's Reviews > The Happiness of Kati

I actually originally read Jane Vejjajiva's 2003 middle grade novel The Happiness of Kati in May 2010 (and I of course was reading Prudence Borthwick's English translation of Vejjaiva's Thai original). But I unfortunately never managed to write a review in 2010 (and then I in fact totally forgot about the book until a few weeks ago when I came across a copy of The Happiness of Kati while sorting through a few of my over-filled bookshelves). And yes indeed, the one main reason why I did not write a review for The Happiness of Kati upon my first perusal is that Jane Vejjajiva's (and by extension bien sûr also Prudence Borthwick's) presented text, that The Happiness of Kati leaves me as a reader (both my adult self and also my so-called inner child) rather majorly conflicted with regard to personal reading pleasure and accepting Kati's story as something to not find a bit overly depressing and also rather infuriating in some and yes even many story places.

For while I definitely appreciate that The Happiness of Kati has as its main theme ALS and how devastating and far-reaching a diagnosis of ALS is, and that Jane Vejjajiva's (Prudence Borthwick’s) poetic words and her descriptions of Thai culture, food and geography totally do shine (and yes, even though there also is quite a bit of textual distancing taking place in The Happiness of Kati, a distancing that as an adult, I find unproblematic and even intriguing, but which my inner child kind of resents a trifle due to its lack of emotional intensity), I certainly do remember feeling intense anger and annoyance at Kati's mother's decision to basically abandon the care of her daughter to her parents due to her diagnosis of ALS. But actually, it is not so much that Kati’s mother asks the grandparents to take her daughter in and become her main caregivers when her ALS symptoms become a possible danger to her young daughter which makes me so very furious (as this actually makes common sense), but rather that Kati is in fact (and in my humble opinion) totally being cast aside by her mother (and with no chance of input), that in the grandparents’ house, no one talks about Kati’s mother, there are no pictures of her present and that even though it is clearly shown in The Happiness of Kati that Kati hugely misses her mother, she is obviously not really allowed to ever openly voice this, to ask questions about her mother and why she is absent.

And no, that Kati is in fact able to visit with her mother and spend time with her before she dies of ALS, well, it does not change the fact that I really have a huge amount of issues that for and to me, the mother’s choice to totally remove herself from her daughter, from Kati is depicted with no criticism whatsoever, that The Happiness of Kati shows no censure whatsoever regarding the mother, and that sorry, even though I do understand why the mother has decided to completely stay away from her daughter, I do not accept that such a total and all encompassing cutting of ties is acceptable and even appropriate.

Finally, I also have to say that while I appreciate the ending of The Happiness of Kati and Kati being given the personal choice (by her dying mother but textually of course by the author) whether or not to contact her biological father in England, considering that Kati is only nine years old, I do wonder if she is in fact mature enough to make the choice she decides upon and that she might in fact regret her decision later (when she is older).

Three stars for The Happiness of Kati, and for me, there is definitely a bit of a conflict between the lyrical descriptiveness of Jane Vejjajiva’s/Prudence Borthwick’s text and the actual thematics and contents of Kati’s story.