Book review - No Fixed Address

Title: No Fixed Address
Author: Susin Nielsen
Genre: realistic fiction
Similar books: The Secret Life of Lincoln Jones by Wendelin van Draanen
                      Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate
Rating:

a solid read

Summary (provided by publisher): For fans of Wendelin van Draanen and Cynthia Lord, a touching and funny middle-grade story about family, friendship, and growing up when you're one step away from homelessness.
Twelve-and-three-quarter-year-old Felix Knutsson has a knack for trivia. His favorite game show is Who What Where When; he even named his gerbil after the host. Felix's mom, Astrid, is loving but can't seem to hold on to a job. So when they get evicted from their latest shabby apartment, they have to move into a van. Astrid swears him to secrecy; he can't tell anyone about their living arrangement, not even Dylan and Winnie, his best friends at his new school. If he does, she warns him, he'll be taken away from her and put in foster care.
As their circumstances go from bad to worse, Felix gets a chance to audition for a junior edition of Who What Where When, and he's determined to earn a spot on the show. Winning the cash prize could make everything okay again. But things don't turn out the way he expects. . . .
Susin Nielsen deftly combines humor, heartbreak, and hope in this moving story about people who slip through the cracks in society, and about the power of friendship and community to make all the difference.

My opinion: Nielsen's strength is in her characters, well developed and usually atypical. In this case we have a single mother and her quirky son. Topically, it deals with poverty, homelessness, and mental illness and the way these issues affect and compound one another. I like that we see living around the poverty line as normal. Felix admits to his friends that things are tough at home, that his mother sometimes loses her job, that money is tight. This is not seen as shameful but a fact of life. It's only the homelessness that he has to hide, between school rules and the looming threat of the foster system. Each complication to their situation makes the other elements harder to overcome and drives them deeper into poverty. It's a sympathetic, charming read. A few plot elements are a bit fantastic but not to an unforgivable degree.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley