Germain is a good listener and he suspects that Margueritte’s love of books and reading are what make her ‘smart’. She reads him passages from the book she is reading, “The plague” by Albert Camus. “… she always talked to me like I was a person. Respect is something that Germain has never before experienced and he finds it to be a wonderful thing. And, more importantly, she has time for Germain and talks to him with respect. Margueritte is a very intelligent and well read woman. Germain only begins to think this way after he meets up with an eighty-six year old woman by the name of Margueritte. He believes that if he knew more words he would be able to get his point across better and people would think of him as being less ‘stupid’.īut, I’m getting ahead of myself….

He is of less than average intelligence, but he has a great thirst for new words and stories. Lacking in tact and social graces, he is frequently the butt of jokes and innuendo that he almost, but not quite, understands. She considers him an ignorant nuisance, actually goes so far as to call him a worthless halfwit, and has never shown him any hint of maternal love. He lives in a tiny caravan at the bottom of his mother’s garden. A man large in both stature and heart, who has been belittled by everyone in his life, but most particularly by his mother and his teachers. Germain is, by his own definition, a forty-five year old thug. “When people are always cutting you down, you don’t get a chance to grow.” Old people have a tendency to die.'Īnd I loved every word and nuance that followed. She’ll be eighty-six any day now so there seemed no point putting it off.

The first lines of “Soft in the head” hooked me:

“Friends are the family we choose for ourselves.” A remarkable and heart-rending novel that perfectly illustrates the quote: This is the engaging story of two people who come together in friendship, kindness, affection, and appreciation.

Soft in the Middle by Shelby Eileen