Happy book review day! Yes, I'm back. I know my book reviews have fallen by the wayside, and I know I always seem to have some excuse, but really, I've just been crazy busy with the new book and life. I'm in a local musical theatre production, and opening night is tomorrow, so my life has been a lot of rehearsal time lately.
Anyway, over Easter break my husband and I went to Mexico. It was gorgeous. We snorkeled and swam and ate and drank and got tanned (okay, also sunburned) and read and it was really just awesome.
Yes, I read. A few books. One of them is the one I'm talking about today, Heading Out to Wonderful, by Robert Goorick.
This book follows Charlie, a charismatic stranger to a small village in Virginia om 1948. Questions arise about him, some of which are never answered. But when he shows up, it's with two suitcases; one contains some clothing items and a set of butcher items. The other is full of money.
“When you're young, and you head out to wonderful, everything is fresh and bright as a brand new penny, but before you get to wonderful you're going to have to pass through all right. And when you get to all right, stop and take a good long look, because that may be as far as you're ever going to go.”
He settles in this small town, and starts setting down roots. He works in a butcher shop, and starts buying land. He also meets Sylvan, beautiful, young, strange Sylvan, obsessed with Hollywood. The two start an intense affair, all under the eyes of five-year-old Sam, son of the closest friends Charlie has in the town.
Things don't end well, though, as heartbreaking tales of this sort often go. And I was actually heartbroken, not only by Sam, but also by the townspeople, and the effect of the words spoken to them from the pulpits in town in how they treat their friend, Charlie Beale.
The characters are rich and layered and so realistic. My personal favourite is probably Claudie, the seamstress who dresses Sylvan in her fancy clothes. Claudie is proud, not arrogant, and stronger than most of the white people in town.
I'm from a small town. It is not like this little Virginian town, and it certainly isn't in the 1940s, yet, in some way, isn't every small town similar in some ways? The town itself is a character in this book. The inhabitants rock to and fro within it, on their chairs on their front porches, knowing everyone's business, doing what is expected and what is instructed from the pulpits in the churches around which their lives revolve.
I've read some reviews of this book that are upset because some questions are left unanswered. Where does Charlie's money come from? We're never told. And you know why? Because it doesn't matter.
Hold on, let me say that again.
It doesn't matter.
All that matters to Charlie is his existence with Sylvan. All that matters to the people of Brownsburg is his existence within their town. They accept him or don't, based on their impression of him.
And - big spoiler alert here, people -
.
.
.
.
.
.
We don't have an omniscient narrator. Our narrator is the memory of a five-year-old boy. He didn't know where Charlie's money came from. So neither do we.
I mean, the narrator even explains why we don't know everything, as well as the accuracy of his tale:
“The thing is, all memory is fiction. You have to remember that. Of course, there are things that actually, certifiably happened, things you can pinpoint the day, the hour, the minute. When you think about it, though, those things, mostly seem to happen to other people. This story actually happened, and it happened pretty much the way I am going to tell it to you. It's a true story as much as six decades or telling and remembering can allow it to be true. Time changes things, and you don't always get everything right. You remember a little thing clear as a bell, the weather, say, or the splash of light on the river's ripples as the sun was going down into the black pines. things not even connected to anything in particular, while other things, big things even, come completely disconnected and no longer have any shape or sound. The little things seem more real than the big things.”
Because this isn't the story of Charlie's life. It is the story of his experiences in Brownsburg, Virginia, in 1948. Love and secrets and violence and faith and loveliness and awfulness all together.
This one really stuck with me. I love realistic characters in a character-driven story, and that is what this was. The writing was good. Solidly good. Some of it was great. But all of it carried me away into these characters' lives; these imperfect characters' lives.
This is a definite recommended read.
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