Most Helpful Customer Reviews
36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Where oh where did my little boy go, March 17, 2003
The boy that Meg put on the school bus this Vermont morning was her asthmatic 8-year-old son, Charlie. The boy who comes home in the afternoon is not. Sure, he almost looks like Charlie, almost acts like Charlie, almost knows the things Charlie should know, but not quite. As Meg sits on the bus studying this boy, the bus driver, Sandy, tells her, "We looked back out the window and there you were, reappearing at the front door when you had been standing there only a second ago." The sheriff arrives, with questions. Meg's partner, Jeff, is summoned from his job in Toronto. Meg's daughter, Katie, a 13-year-old very full of herself, is retrieved from boarding school. The boy is taken to Charlie's doctor for tests, where it's discovered he no longer has asthma. He's taller, stronger, more adventurous. Everyone asks the same question: Is this Charlie? And no one knows. Because the book jacket made the mistake of calling THE BOY ON THE BUS a mystery, I expected a different sort of ending and was disappointed by the lack of resolution. Had Schupack used Meg's identity crisis to resolve the questions, I would have been satisfied, but as it was I enjoyed every moment up until the last several pages, then felt cheated. Still, this little novel is an excellent psychological portrait of a family in limbo. All of the characters except Charlie are well drawn (Charlie comes across as shadowy at best, but perhaps that's intended), the prose is beautiful and descriptive, the dialogue realistic, and the resulting impression very surreal. Although at times I had trouble with the plot -- if my kid came home in Charlie's condition I'd be screaming for conclusive evidence -- I also appreciated the fact that Schupack didn't turn this story into a thriller but instead kept the search very much inside the family's heads. Even as Meg no longer knows her own son, she finds herself a stranger to her partner and daughter as well. And even herself. Although certainly not a mystery as claimed, THE BOY ON THE BUS is a clever and expertly crafted search for identity and can be appreciated as such. Anna Klein
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This novel is a gem of a debut for Deborah Shupack, March 8, 2003
THE BOY ON THE BUS, Deborah Shupack's first novel, opens with a school bus stopping to drop its final passenger at an upper-middle-class home in rural Vermont. But when Meg Landry climbs aboard to greet her eight-year-old son, who remains in his seat, she realizes that something is amiss. Mother and child don't recognize each other. "This was not her son," Meg thinks. "He looked quite a bit like CharlieBut there were differences." Meg is at a loss as to how to explain the situation and feels quite awkward in front of Sandy, the school bus driver on whom she has an incipient crush. She is overwhelmed and has an eerie sense of powerlessness. Soon, several townspeople, including the sheriff, are gathered around the bus and, in the unspoken pressure to keep things moving along normally, Meg invites the young stranger into her house. The cool bravura of Schupak's first chapter leaves the reader feeling a weird chill and a gnawing curiosity. The chill lingers throughout the book's terse 215 pages. The curiosity, to a certain extent, is left unrewarded. Charlie is not a Stepford child, there are no evil experiments taking place in small town New England and no abductions or exorcisms ensue. Instead, with creeping subtlety and creepy insistence, THE BOY ON THE BUS evolves into a compelling meditation on personal identity and the degree to which family members can never know each other --- and themselves. The novel, even in its brevity, is much more like a Twilight Zone episode than a plot-thick airport paperback. For some readers, the lack of a puzzle-perfect solution to the mysteries of THE BOY ON THE BUS will make the novel less than satisfying. Others, however, will cheer for Schupak's intellectual audacity and her mischievous placement of familiar genre landmarks (the estranged husband, the over-involved small town sheriff, the missing child) at the beginning of what proves to be an unexpectedly experimental work of literature. Like an exurban Paul Auster, Schupack seamlessly blends the quotidian and the oblique. In her portrayal of Meg's relationship with her husband Jeff, who has been away on business for much of the past two years, Schupack also begs favorable comparison to the master of abstract domestic riddles, playwright Edward Albee. There are echoes of Albee's miscommunicating couples from WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, THE PLAY ABOUT THE BABY and THE GOAT, OR WHO IS SYLVIA in Meg and Jeff's clipped dialogue --- indirect at one moment, stinging the next. And like Albee's dueling duos, their discussions are ultimately more about the existentialism of wedded life (How are we connected? What does our marriage mean?) rather than the specific question of the situation at hand (Is this boy our son Charlie?). It eventually becomes clear that Meg's confusion about the boy is linked to her own acute identity crisis. Once an aspiring painter, Meg has let her artistic pursuits drift to the wayside, turning her life's focus to motherhood. But tugged by muffled yearnings to reclaim the pursuit she has gradually abandoned, Meg seems to experience a sort of internal self-division, an inability to integrate her past self with her present circumstances. She is torn between raising children and birthing brainchildren. Written in elegant plainspoken prose that doesn't lend easily to quoted extracts, THE BOY ON THE BUS is a smooth and easy read that you can finish in one sitting. Only upon reaching its end does the reader realize quite how prickly and provocative the novel is. Infused with ambiguity and endless seductiveness, this novel is a gem of a debut. --- Reviewed by Jim Gladstone
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
About family issues and identity crisis, April 6, 2003
Deborah Schupack's debut novel reminds me of the capgras syndrome, a psychological condition in which the patient fails to recognize a close family member or friends. Maybe our protagonist Meg's condition is not as severe as such, or she doesn't suffer from it at all, but the idea of a mother who fails to recognize her own son is promising enough to draw my attention. Vermont. Mudseason. On an ordinary Thursday afternoon, something extraordinary, at least to Meg, happens. The boy who comes home on the school bus is not the boy whom she sends off to school on the same bus this morning! The new boy looks and acts like Charlie, her 8-year-old son; but there is something subtly and indescribably different about him despite the copper hair and tea-brown eyes that share with Charlie's. Where does he get that argyle sweater that shouldn't be worn by an 8-year-old? What happens to his face that looks maturer? Not only is the sheriff summoned to the bus, the whole town show up and prey on her for information of her child's tantrum. A tension kicks in as the whole family comes home. Jeff Carroll, Meg's partner and father of the boy and his 13-year-old sister Katie, has taken up an architectural project in Canada and is seldom found at home. Katie is retrieved from the boarding school to talk her brother and see what might have gone amiss. Neither Jeff nor Katie resolve to make out of Charlie's problem. He's just acting weird, Katie notes. Dr. Ireland at the Vermont County Hospital concludes that the boy no longer has asthma. Not only is the boy more energetic and stronger, he is full of knowledge that a 8-year-old usually will not bear. He is charming and unnervingly polite. This book is more about family and Meg's personal identity crisis than mystery that the blurb claims to be. I'm somewhat disappointed Schupack has not offered a solid resolution to the question that troubles Meg (and myself): Is that really Charlie? I guess it's not so much about whether the boy is Charlie or not; of more interest to me is what might have prompted Meg to think the boy is not Charlie. Meg herself struggles with being a mother and an aspiring painter. The very reason to move into a farm in Vermont is to rekindle that painter's aspiration in Meg that was inevitably put away when she had to focus on being a mother. Continual absences of Jeff and Charlie's chronic asthmatic condition take a toll on Meg as well. A lack of father figure also takes a toll on the boy, who is willing to "disappear" in exchange for his father's stay at the house. While Meg no longer knows her son, she feels she doesn't deserve the child, who is better and more grown up. The novel follows this family for less than 4 days but has revealed a slice of a typical family and its issues: rebellious teenage daughter who calls her brother a "weakling", husband-and-wife communication (or the lack of such)....Despite an ending that might be somewhat ambiguous, the book is cleverly and elegantly written. 3.9 stars.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
