The Shadow Year: A Novel
A novel where fantasy and reality blur as family, memory, and the town's hidden history surface through strange events.
Work Information
A novel where fantasy and reality blur as family, memory, and the town's hidden history surface through strange events.
A novel where fantasy and reality blur as family, memory, and the town's hidden history surface through strange events.
Book Information
- Publisher
- William Morrow
- Published
- 2008-03-11
- Pages
- 304 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 15.24 x 2.57 x 22.86 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780061231520
- ISBN-10
- 0061231525
- Price
- 2599 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Contemporary
In New York's Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy laments the approaching close of summer and the advent of sixth grade. Growing up in a household with an overworked father whom he rarely sees, an alcoholic mother who paints wonderful canvases that are never displayed, an older brother who serves as both tormentor and protector, and a younger sister who inhabits her own secret world, the boy takes his amusements where he can find them. Some of his free time is spent in the basement of the family's modest home, where he and his brother, Jim, have created Botch Town, a detailed cardboard replica of their community, complete with clay figurines representing friends and neighbors. And so the time passes with a not-always-reassuring sameness—until the night a prowler is reported stalking the neighborhood. Appointing themselves ad hoc investigators, the brothers set out to aid the police—while their little sister, Mary, smokes cigarettes, speaks in other voices, inhabits alternate personas . . . and, unbeknownst to her older siblings, moves around the inanimate residents of Botch Town. But ensuing events add a shadowy cast to the boys' night games: disappearances, deaths, and spectral sightings capped off by the arrival of a sinister man in a long white car trawling the neighborhood after dark. Strangest of all is the inescapable fact that every one of these troubling occurrences seems to correspond directly to the changes little Mary has made to the miniature town in the basement. Not since Ray Bradbury's classic Dandelion Wine has a novel so richly evoked the dark magic of small-town boyhood. At once a hypnotically compelling mystery, a masterful re-creation of a unique time and place, a celebration of youth, and a poignant and disquieting portrait of home and family—all balancing on a razor's edge separating reality from the unsettlingly remarkable— The Shadow Year is a monumental new work from one of contemporary fiction's most fearless and inventive artists.
Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, the Edgar Award–winning The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, The Shadow Year, and The Twilight Pariah , and his collections include The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, Crackpot Palace, and A Natural History of Hell . He lives near Columbus, Ohio, and teaches writing at Ohio Wesleyan University.
Reviews
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Nostalgia, mystery and adventure in a dark, suburban tale.
I loved this book. I read it slowly to draw the experience out and will probably read it again. It never went astray and was just as dreamy, mysterious and funny from the beginning to the end. The characters are relatable and it has a similar 'coming of age' vibe as Stand by Me but is also filled with quirks and characters that are memorable and relatable. The trio of siblings at the centre of the story (The Boy (our narrator), Jim and Mary) are all so well drawn and their parents and grand-parents form a perfectly dysfunctional and loving family. The horror elements are truly scary and the mystery draws the reader in. Best of all the writing, I mean the prose itself is excellent. Recommended reading for anybody who loves reading.
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Fine
The book arrived quickly and in perfect shape so I have nothing to complain about or to say about this order. The book itself is the best novel I've read for half a year.
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A less Gory Stephen King
Excellent. Like a less gory Stephen King. Loved the quirky yet real family
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Well crafted
A really well crafted story. It proceeds slowly and with a great deal of humor intertwined in the plot, which somehow makes the scary parts even creepier. I would have given it five stars but the ending felt like the editor told the author to "hurry up and finish the book". The book will certainly transport any reader back to the days of childhood. In fact, at certain points, I wondered if the scary things were happening or if they were the result of kids need to make up adventures, as my cousin and I did during those long summer days between school years or when we had the thrill of Halloween on the horizon, of course as the story proceeds it is clear there is something lurking around town. This is a great summer or Autumn read.
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Powerful and riveting
I read this book a while ago, during the 'lazy, hazy' days of summer, but it stayed with me long enough to push me into a review. As I read it, I found myself floating through the story with the protagonist, seeing it through his eyes, feeling the air, smelling the scents and hearing the sounds. To me, when I can see, hear and smell and touch while reading the words on paper it's the sign of great writing. And that The Shadow Year is indeed--great writing. The story was gripping and drew me in by the deliberate, slithering presentation of the events of the plot, just like the waters of a slow river. The story started as a summer of a specific year, in a specific location. But, as it moved on, it was obvious the result of deep and distant memories, the way I recall my childhood at times--a mystical place, yet very real, snatches of sights, sounds and events. This novel is written like a tapistry of those moments of memory. The ending left me wondering for a long time after. To this day, I think of it. That indeed is the sign of a good book.