The Wishing Game

Content Warning: This section discusses child abuse, childhood trauma, and child sexual assault in direct reference to events occurring in the narrative.

Throughout most of the novel, the text challenges the idea that adults who have children biologically are necessarily adequate parents and that misgivings about adoption are dubious and often unfounded. The novel creates a dichotomy between the characters along this line, often portraying biological parents, like Lucy’s or Autumn’s, in the worst light imaginable, while depicting adults who wish to become parents through adoption, like Lucy and Jack, as having the qualities of nurturing and protective parents. In addition, Jack’s character arc is a reaction to his own parents’ failings. As a survivor of child abuse, he knows the horrors of being tied to an alcohol-dependent and violent father and the helplessness of being a child in such a situation. The text highlights this persistent terror in how Jack describes his father:

‘Jack’s father was an alcoholic. He said it was like growing up with a werewolf. When he was a normal man, he was all right, he was […] human. When he was drinking, he turned into a monster, just like that.’ He [Hugo] snapped his fingers (209).

By making Jack a beloved children’s literature author, however, the novel reveals that Jack’s childhood isn’t an exception; it’s an uncomfortably common occurrence. Many children endure trauma because they have bad parents, the text intimates. Because Jack is a popular author, he receives innumerable letters from children who live this waking nightmare at home. Hugo tells Lucy about the tragedy of Autumn’s death: “Seven years ago, Autumn wrote Jack a fan letter. She told him her wish, that her father would stop coming into her bedroom at night. […] You don’t want to know how many letters he gets like that” (199).

Childhood trauma isn’t always physical or sexual in nature, either. Through Lucy and Angie’s neglectful parents, the novel shows how parents don’t necessarily have their children’s best interests in mind: They can be selfish and self-serving and use their children for their sordid desires. Of the two sisters, Angie bore the brunt of their parents’ conditional love. As she explains to Lucy, Angie was only useful to her parents for their self-validation:

‘Because they weren’t happy unless I was sick,’ she said. ‘They liked me when I was sick. They like sending me to doctors and getting me treatment. Once I got better physically, I had to have other things wrong with me for Mom and Dad to fix. […] If they weren’t heroes, trying to do everything they could to save their precious baby, what else would they do with their lives, right?’ (233).

Conversely, Lucy’s healthiness made her useless for her parents’ faux martyrdom, which is why they abandoned her and gave her to her grandparents to raise. They didn’t seem to care that their decision scarred their child and left her feeling unwanted.

By comparison, the novel portrays Lucy and Jack as ideal parents (though each with some faults). For Lucy, Christopher is her son in everything but name, despite being unable to navigate the foster-to-adoption process. Her financial struggles and living arrangements fail to meet the proper criteria for adoption. However, one factor makes her a better prospective parent than, say, Mrs. Bailey, Christopher’s foster mother: During the conclusive segment of Jack’s contest, Lucy plainly states that Christopher is her top priority and she’d willingly sacrifice everything out of love for him: “He matters to me a billion times more than any book, any game. And I’m not going to tell him that he has to wait until he grows up to be happy. He’s going to be happy now, even if it kills me to make him happy” (192). Although Lucy initially hesitates to make every sacrifice for Christopher (specifically, giving up time with him), her personal growth as a mother figure in this moment demonstrates that her first and only priority the happiness and well-being of the boy she already considers her son.

Jack, meanwhile, is an excellent father figure to wayward children. After all, most of his young readers, including Lucy, wanted him to be their father, which sparked a few runaway attempts. Although he was never brave enough to adopt during his younger years, Jack nonetheless garnered himself surrogate children, particularly Hugo. Both recognize that his relationship with Hugo, while not official, is parental. Jack’s commitment to his adoptive son mimics Lucy’s to hers to highlight this connection: He’s willing to sacrifice everything for Hugo’s happiness. As Hugo explains to Lucy, while Jack is an immensely successful author, he would have ended his career to protect Hugo when the publishing company threatened to fire him:

Jack refused to let them sack me. He said he’d quit writing Clock Island books if they tried. Still can’t believe the most famous writer alive stuck his neck out for me like that. It was humbling. He got me sorted, and I’ve stayed that way ever since (162).

Thus, the text illustrates that though Jack never thought of himself as a father, his actions told the opposite story. After all, his love and care for Hugo got him through his period of depression and inspired him pick up his pen to write again. In the end, the novel’s portrayal of parenthood implies that the title of “good parent” is earned through sacrifice and love and isn’t innate to biological parents.