1) Summmary

When their parents die, the four children of the house with the cement garden get isolated. All the houses in the neighbourhood are demolished for a new motorway. The cement garden was an idea of the father of the house: he found that working in the garden was too much work and too difficult, and covering it with cement was the easiest way to solve the problem. While the father was covering the garden with cement, he got a heart attack and died.
The mother of the children was very ill, and the children had to deal with the household all by them selves. Three days after Jack’s birthday, she died.


The children decide not to let anyone know, because they want to stay together in their house. They put their mother in a big trunk into the basement which they fill up with cement.

After their mother’s death, Tom- the youngest child of the family- wants to be treated like a girl, because he’s teased at school. Sue and Julie dress him like a real girl. Tom doesn’t suffer of not having a mother, because Julie acts like his mother. He also loves playing and thinking he’s still a baby.
Jack hates the fact that Julie has a boyfriend. He’s in love with his oldest sister, and he has a lot of fantasies about her. When Derek wonders why there is such a horrible smell coming from the basement, he is told that they buried their dog in it, and he helps the children covering the crack in the cement.

One day, Derek catches Julie and Jack having sex. He already knew what was really hidden in the basement, and he doesn’t want to keep it secret anymore. As quickly as possible, he warns the police.

2) Comment on 2 main personages.

One of the main personages is Jack. He is not the kind of hero we often see in movies, but you can see him as a hero, because he doesn’t lose all of his courage after the death of his parents. He tries to accelerate, although that is not very easy in a household managed by his oldest sister. Especially because he knows that his mother asked him to manage the household together with Sue. But she does it all on her own, and he accepts this more or less. He is fourteen years old, and when his parents die, he’s in his full puberty. He doesn’t show a lot of emotions, but that might be his way to deal with the fact of not having parents anymore. First, he keeps distance from is brother and sisters, and he stays a lot alone in his room, or in the bathroom. He has a lot of arguments, but he also has very deep conversations with his sister Sue.
He has a crush on his oldest sister Julie, and he masturbates thinking about her. Because of that, he thinks he’s a dirty boy. He starts not washing himself anymore, he is already dirty, so it can’t get worse.
When Sue once said that he’s dirty and repugnant, he realises that he should wash himself, and he gets closer to the other members of the family.
He also hates Julie’s boyfriend Derek because he’s jealous.
Jack is a little bit the stereotype of an adolescent: he wrestles with a lot of different problems, he’s confused about his feelings for Julie,…He also looks like an adolescent: he is long and lanky, and he has a lot of spots.

“I looked in the mirror and saw that the spots on my face were spreading down the sides of my neck”


(p85, Jack)

But Jack also has a sensitive side: he’s concerned about his youngest brother Tom, and he wants to help him when he’s teased, but –and this is again typical for an adolescent- he doesn’t want his brother to do anything that could look “ridiculous”, like dressing himself like a girl.

Another personage is Julie. Julie is the oldest child of the family, she is sixteen years old.
Julie is very attractive, she has an athletic body because she does a lot of training.
When their mother gets ill, she starts managing the household, and when both of their parents are death, she takes full responsibility. Jack doesn’t like her playing the big boss, and they argue a lot. The focus of her attention is her demanding youngest brother Tom. Tom really sees her as his mother, but he still realises that his real mother is death.
But Julie isn’t that sure about her role as a mother for her younger brother and sister (Jack is already too old to be really treat like “her child”). When she dresses Tom like a girl, she’s pretty unsure about this.
It’s pretty clear that Julie isn’t ready for a role as a mother.
She’s confused by her own actions when she starts to make Tom regress into babyhood because she can’t control him.
Julie’s boyfriend Derek also has an influence on the family. Julie wants to get rid of Derek, not because she doesn’t love him anymore, but because she fears he will usurp her authority.

Julie:
“He wants to be one of the family, you know, big smart daddy. he’s getting on my nerves” (p 133)

When Jack starts washing himself and acting normal, this has an impact on Julie, and she starts seeing him from a better side. Actually, Jack and Julie are starting to act like a mother and a father, which is not that weird because they’ve lost all sense of reality, being isolated for such a long time.

In the end, they even get a sexual relation.

3) Time

This is a contemporary story.
The whole story is told in chronological order. But there are exceptions, like :

“I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way” (Jack, p 9)

We already know that the father of the children is going to die, but it is not like a real “fast forward”.

There are also some flashbacks in the book, for example when Jack thinks about the game he played with Julie and Sue when they were younger.

4) Space

The story could take place in no matter which European country. The United States of America are also possible.
Most of the time, the characters are in their house, sometimes in the living room, sometimes in the bathroom,…
The house is literary isolated from the rest of the world: there are no houses in the neighbourhood, because they had to be demolished for a motorway.

5) Perspectives

We follow the story trough the eyes of Jack, who is fourteen years old. The perspective never changes during the story.

“It’s a dead dog,” Julie said suddenly and simply. “Jack’s dog.” Derek grinned.

I said, “ you promised you wouldn’t say.”

(p 120)

This way, we can really imagine being in Jack’s place, and we understand why he does the things he does.

6) My comment on the story

I liked reading this book. The language used by the author isn’t too difficult, and I could understand all the words. I think there’s nothing more annoying than having to look up some words before you can understand a sentence.

The story captivated me for the full hundred percent, you never know what is going to happen on the next page, and that made me really curious. The author always finds interesting ways to describe what happens, without getting dramatic.

The characterisation is done very well: all the personages are seen from more than one side, and that makes everything very realistic.
The story also confuses you a little bit: you start to ask yourself what is “normal” and what is not. The relation between Jack and Julie for example, is told in such a natural way, that it takes a while to realise that what they did is not normal at all.

The story is controversial, and I can imagine that a lot of people were shocked when they read it for the first time. But to me, that aspect doesn’t matter, there are more shocking facts in the world.

This is a book that no one will forget easily, and I guess that is one of the main purposes of the writer.

A must-read for everyone!