Didi tries her best to be a good girl, but it’s hard to keep track of her father’s rules. When she wins a chess tournament, he’s angry she didn’t win with a better move and makes her run laps around the house. When she runs laps the next day, she has to keep running until she’s faster than the day before. When she’s skilled enough to outshoot him with both a gun and bow and arrow, he grows furious when she won’t then shoot a baby rabbit who crosses their path. And Didi can’t do anything to escape being threatened with the Hurt Stick when she misbehaves.
He’s all she has, he reminds her. They have to be prepared. They have to be prepared to fight the rest of the world, when the world comes to an end. He’s grooming her, to keep her safe. He loves Didi. He does—he says so! And so Didi runs harder; annihilates her opponents in chess; takes down a deer at a dead run. He’s grooming her, after all, to be the best…he says so.
This is a quick read, starting when Didi is eleven and then jumping back to her at five. Even at that age her father is clearly an angry, abusive man. Weirdly, the horror is both blunted and sharpened by the fact that Didi doesn't understand how wrong it is, but we, the readers, do. It's a sad proof of the fact that whatever children are exposed to becomes their normal.
As Didi gets older her thoughts grow more disordered, which leads to some trippy sequences where her narration is confused and mixed up - including one in school which I was sure was leading somewhere, but just sort of stopped and let us imagine what would happen next. There are some time jumps, but they're well labelled, so there's no confusion on that side.
I genuinely felt my stomach drop several times while reading this. I recommend it to older kids. Although the blurb seems to imply that Didi's father thinks the apocalypse is coming, and that's not mentioned anywhere in the text, so don't be confused! I'd love to read more about how Didi adapts to her new life, but I'd say this is probably where it will end.
Definitely worth the read, if tough in spots.
Trigger publishes on the 29th March, 2022. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.
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