Not My Problem

Aideen Cleary is good at fixing other people's problems and bad at facing her own. When she finds classmate Meabh Kowalska crying in a school bathroom over an unmanageable workload, her solution is to push her down a flight of stairs. It leaves Meabh with a sprained ankle and an excuse to cancel everything on her plate.

Kavi Thakrar sees the whole thing happen. Within a week Aideen has a business: bring her a problem, and she will solve it, for a favor owed. Set in Ireland, it is a queer coming-of-age story about a girl who is much better at other people's crises than her own.

Aideen keeps trading favors while her mother starts drinking again, her grades slip, and she stops answering her best friend Holly's calls. Meabh will not stay fixed. She keeps coming back to argue about the terms of their deal, and then simply to spend time with Aideen, which neither of them expected.

Narrated in Aideen's blunt, sarcastic voice, the book plays the favor scheme for laughs while her home life gets harder to ignore. It reads as a comedy about a girl who cannot ask for help. It never lets her mother's drinking resolve itself just so the romance can end cleanly.