Review: The Enumerations by Maire Fisher

Noah Groome finds safety in fives. Diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, Noah’s habits and quirks usually revolve around multiples of five. However, when the security afforded by his preoccupation and routines bleeds out into other aspects of his life, and causes problems at his school, it is decided that Noah should participate in a three-month residency programme at Greenhills. Here, he meets fellow teens with various issues of their own. As friendships slowly blossom, and Noah begins to address his fears and preoccupations, he begins to understand just how his OCD started, and what is feeding it.

Noah’s road to recovery is peppered with challenges; the chief among them being a horde of secrets from his father’s past. Longing to understand his father’s (and thus his own) history, Noah keeps probing until the truth comes out, and what he learns could destroy his family completely.

If forced to describe The Enumerations, the word that charges to the tip of my tongue is ‘remarkable’. Through clever prose and gripping storylines, Maire Fisher creates a world in which the unseen is afforded weight and heft. In this world, what we cannot see can cause far more damage than those things we can see. Noah is the embodiment of isolation – through his diagnosis and the resultant prison of his own mind, he goes beyond the common trope of misunderstood teenager to pure anomaly. Similarly, his story is testimony to the incredible power of family – however, whether this power is used for good or evil is up to the wielder.

Fisher tactfully and delicately handles the minefield of mental illness; in so doing, she affords these illnesses redemptive powers. While the teens and their families may suffer alone, together – through their connections, their blood, and their experiences – they are linked through their challenges and flaws.

The Enumerations does not portray mental illness as a crutch, a damnation, or a blight, but rather, as a result of some concrete cause; something that is unintended, despite its destruction. This rather refreshing viewpoint serves to cement Fisher’s message that we are greater than the sum of our parts, and that in all things, we are connected. Despite this, there is comfort to be found in Fisher’s dissection of the unknown – light can always shine through the smallest crack, and no secret can put a stop to love.

The Enumerations by Maire Fisher is published by Umuzi, an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa.