Always, Clementine

By: Carlie Sorosiak / Narrated By: Taylor Meskimen

Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins

Wonderful for kids… and, like, meeee! but oh DO keep hankies nearby…

My parents didn’t believe in Shielding Their Kids; and the TV was ALWAYS on… Consequently? I learned a LOT about stuff I didn’t wanna learn about at the time, cuz it made my heart ache. BUT it was stuff that was True and Happening, so I developed an attitude about Man’s Inhumanity to Man/The Environment/Animals: If I spared Myself Suffering? I Perpetuated The Suffering of Others.

And so, I learned early on about laboratory animals used for experimentation, whether it was household products, meds, just plain danged BS testing (Don’t eeeeven get me started on William Dement’s continued tests AFTER his cats sleep studies…!!!).

And so (Again), I wondered how author Carlie Sorosiak would craft an entire tale about a laboratory mouse named Clementine (Actually, she’s Subject 7… but when she befriends an imprisoned Chimpanzee named Rosie, “Clementine” comes to mind due to little clementine oranges that are much-loved). Would Sorosiak manage to hit hard… uhm, withOUT devastating her intended audience o’ kidlets?

Lemme put it this way: Dude! I’m soooo not her intended audience, having hit the peak and am now descending the proverbial “Hill” in age, and by gosh! was I getting a lump in m’ throat several times, danged near shedding a tear at the end, or what?!

Oh who am I kidding? I cried, dang it!

Clementine and another mouse from the experiment (Intelligence-Enhanced mice) are pilfered from the lab by a lab tech with a conscience. He KNOWS what their fate will be, canNOT stand it, and drives the pair Helter Skelter away from the lab. All aquiver with fright, he doesn’t get too far before losing his nerve and does the only thing he can think of: He deposits both mice (The second is named Hamlet) in a mailbox and drives off.

The mice are found by an accident-prone boy named Gus and his grandfather Pops. Gus carries the weight of being known as a Mess and Possible Failure by his dad, and he’s constantly trying to just Do Good, Be Better. Pops, on the other hand, loves and accepts Gus the way he is. And by the way? The pair loooove playing chess, and Pops is an expert.

The story is told in letters to Rosie, Clementine’s best friend still back in the lab (Rosie hooooowled when Clementine was taken away… a particularly sorrowful image that Sorosiak fearlessly chucks at the listener). She’s trying to keep in touch with Rosie in any way she can. And as she develops bonds with Gus and Pops, and as others join the fray, her letters become longer, more detailed, sometimes fraught with terror. Because Sorosiak crafted the Researchers as Villains hellbent on recovering their purloined experiment subjects. That Clementine in particular has shown soooo much progress and problem solving skills? Well, that just makes them wanna get her back in the lab and remove her brain for study. So see?! Booooo! to Researchers, esPECially as they drive around, trying to look innocuous in an ice cream van.

NATURALLY I wasn’t sure I was going to like Taylor Meskimen’s narration at first as she just seemed uncomfortable with her reading. But I was vaaastly taken in with her many and varied voices for all the other characters in the story, each so very different, but with her voices for them? Completely distinguishable without any real vocal juggling. There’s one 90-year old woman who’s dour and scrappy and sounds like she’s had a lifetime of smoking a pack a day, and Meskimen flowed into her dialogue with complete ease, which I found to be AWEsome. Then, as she fleshes out Hamlet, who begins seemingly unaffected by the experimentation, Meskimen’s slow building of his personality is really a stand-out because he does some of the most moving things in the story. A gifted whisker turns into a major deal/plot device, and Meskimen slowly builds to an adrenaline-producing scene worthy of special note. Just well done, and huzzah huzzah huzzah for tear-inducing choices at the end, narration that TOTALLY relayed well-written characters.

When I end an audiobook and have to sit and stare at a wall for a few (Granted, just a FEW!) minutes, pondering just how the HECK an author managed to take political hot-button issues, some hardcore Worldly Truths, and STILL package it for Kids? Well, that’s just a fanTAStically crafted story!

Said it before; say it again: Well done to BOTH author AND narrator!

Now excuse me while I dab a remaining tear or two from m’ eye… >Sniffle<