In Torontonian Heather Waldorf’s newest novel, 15-year-old Sarah Greene has been “sentenced” to spend the summer working at Camp Dog Gone Fun, a kind of shelter that cares for rescued dogs. Her crime – stealing a car and crashing it – is not nearly as compelling as the reason she committed it. Her motivation is pieced together throughout the novel as we ultimately realize that Sarah stole the car to retrieve a shoebox containing pornographic photos her father had taken of her throughout her life.

The child pornography element may take a little too long to come to the forefront – for much of the novel it seems more like key background material than the central focus of the story – but when it does emerge as
the dominant storyline, the emotional punch is staggering.

Because of her horrific past, Sarah maintains an emotional distance from the people around her. She strikes up a relationship with Sullivan, the son of a social worker, but attempts to convince the reader, and herself, that she is simply using him to finally get her hands on, and destroy, the haunting photographs. Waldorf gives her readers a tremendous amount of credit for being able to see through the tough-girl act, and as a result, Sarah’s false front actually serves to give the novel a more genuine tone.

Waldorf’s respect for her readers comes through not just in the words she puts on the page, but also in the ideas she allows readers to come up with on their own. Leftovers is a frank novel that asks the reader to come to grips with the central character’s feelings of shame and guilt – the “leftovers” of abuse that give the book its title. While Sarah knows there is nothing to feel ashamed or guilty about, we understand how difficult it is for her to leave those particular leftovers behind.