TILLY

Tonight I went to a dessert social that was a fundraiser for our local crisis pregnancy centre. The Quinte Youth Alliance put on the play Tilly, based on the novel of the same name by Frank Perreti.

The actors did an excellent job. They knew their lines perfectly and the performance went off without a hitch. The play tells a good story and has a message or two that needs to be heard.

The story is about Cathy Ross, a woman who goes to a funeral and sees a woman weeping at a grave with the name Tilly etched on the tombstone. The proverbial biscuit is dipped in the tea and all Cathy's memories come flooding back. Cathy and her husband Dan eventually learn that Tilly is the name of the baby Cathy aborted nine years earlier. The woman at the abortion clinic gave her a funeral.

While the performance and the basic story are good, I have a problem with some aspects of this story.

First and foremost, the plot is very underdeveloped. The novel itself is only 126 pages. The characters are not given time to develop and the reasons for why they did what they did are never clear. From a literary standpoint, it should have been a much longer novel, taking us back to when Cathy got pregnant and leading up to the time nine years in the future when the events of the novel take place. Additionally, Perreti should have devoted part of the novel to telling the back story of Anita Mendoza, the woman at the abortion clinic, as well as that of the woman at the funeral home.

Second, there are too many loose ends. It's never clear whether Cathy and Dan are Christians. Cathy mentions that she used to sing "Jesus Loves Me" to her kids when they were little. This would seem to indicate that she has been a Christian for a number of years, but if she was a Christian at the time she became pregnant with Tilly, why did she have the abortion? It's never explicitly stated what the Ross's spiritual standing is.

Also, Anita Mendoza is the woman who worked at the abortion clinic. She had her pastor perform the ceremony for Tilly. It's indicated, in the play at least, that Mendoza was a new Christian. If she was a Christian, why was she working at the abortion clinic? I assume that she had just recently become a Christian and was trying to get out of her job there, but whether this is the case or not is never made clear.

Cathy eventually discovers that Tilly and God have forgiven her for aborting Tilly, but whether Cathy becomes a Christian or not is never revealed. What happens to her? Does she go on to lead a Christian life?

Most importantly, we are never clearly told why Cathy aborted Tilly in the first place. After the play, the director of the crisis pregnancy centre said that in the novel, it said that Cathy and Dan didn't want to have any more children. However, from the reviews I've read on Amazon, this isn't made clear in the novel.

Third, the characters are not developed (because the plot is not developed.) As I said above, there needed to be a lot more of a back story.

On a positive note, the story does contain some messages that need to be heard, particularly that abortion hurts everybody. The woman feels guilty for years and the other people involved feel hurt by it, too.