Falling Boy: A Novel (Paperback)

by Alison McGhee (Author) "They spent their lives in search of sweetness, these bees: blue morning glories climbing the trellis outside the bakery window, a half-empty packet of sugar,..." (more)
Key Phrases: yellow bathing cap, brown velvet chair, creepy bird, Mighty Thor, Flying Joseph, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
A late adolescence of fierce, sweet turmoil provides the inspiration for McGhee (Shadow Baby), who also writes YA novels. His legs recently paralyzed in an accident, 16-year-old, wheelchair-bound Joseph works in a Minneapolis bakery with Zap, a boy of 17, and is pelted with questions by Enzo, a girl of nine whom no one seems to be looking after. After the accident, Joseph left upstate New York and his troubled mother to live with a father he barely knows. Enzo, who desperately wants Joseph to be a superhero hurt performing a feat of derring-do, persists in trying to unravel the accident's mystery. Mai, a lovely teenage girl with a growing crush on Joseph, and her younger brother, Cha (who is locked in an interior world of his own, add to the mix. McGhee renders their insular world delicately, but the narrative gets saturated with that world's atmosphere, and the characters often come across as too young for their years. Readers willing to suspend some disbelief will be charmed by McGhee's tender and affecting coming-of-age tale. (Mar.)
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From School Library Journal
Adult/High School—Two boys work in a Minneapolis bakery—Zap, whose father owns it, and Joseph, recently paralyzed and in a wheelchair. Their most regular customer, Enzo, is an overtly angry nine-year-old who insists on being called the Mighty Thor, and who endlessly clicks her mechanical pencil. The book unfolds slowly as readers learn about these damaged kids, while the adults stay on the periphery. These adults never even get names; they are called "The Figurehead" and "the old guy," with one exception, John Schaefer, the man who investigated Joseph's accident, who is only referred to in the boy's memory. No one knows what really happened, but Enzo is determined to find out, while Zap tells everyone that Joseph is a superhero who can fly, and who fell off a mountain. McGhee's style is at times reminiscent of David Almond's, with the realistic yet magical setting transferred from the Northern England wilderness to an urban setting. Other times, it skirts art movie pretensions, especially when adults pop up and make obtuse statements, then disappear. All of the questions are eventually answered, and, despite the sad subject matter, the end gives the characters hope. Though the mystical metaphor sometimes comes on a bit strong, sensitive teens could easily be drawn into this story of emotionally compromised kids.—Jamie Watson, Harford County Public Library, MD
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Picador (February 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312425929
• ISBN-13: 978-0312425920
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #880,275 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a beautiful novel filled with sadness and wonder, March 7, 2007

By	Joe Sherry (Minnesota) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In Falling Boy, Joseph works in a bakery in Minneapolis. He is sixteen years old and he is confined to a wheelchair, but more than that he is often confined within his own mind. He speaks some, but not often and not at length and certainly not about the reason why he is confined to a wheelchair in Minneapolis. Zap is seventeen years old and while I cannot tell exactly if he works at the bakery or if he just spends all his time there, I believe he works with Joseph at the bakery. Zap, nicknamed such because of his obsession with comic books tells everybody that Joseph is in a wheelchair because Joseph saved his mother from falling off of a precipice, a cliff overlooking the sea. Enzo, a nine year old girl, is another who frequents the bakery and seems to be in something of a war with Zap, though the reason why is not clear at the beginning of Falling Boy. She constantly attempts to find the reason why Joseph cannot just get up and walk and while she does not seem to believe Zap she also calls Joseph a superhero, something which Joseph denies being.

This is Falling Boy, the third young adult novel by Alison McGhee. While McGhee has now published as many young adult novels as she has published adult novels, the latest two (All Rivers Flow to the Sea and Falling Boy) are of such a high quality that if you take away the "young adult" tag and just call the books "novels" the reader will be left with two outstanding works of fiction which just happen to feature few adults as main characters and focus on the situations of these children. But then again, Shadow Baby was tightly focused on a child as well.

What I am trying to say here is that Falling Boy (and All Rivers Flow to the Sea before it) should not be judged so much by the proposed age group target, but rather by it being a fine piece of fiction. As she does with all of her fiction, Alison McGhee delivers finely drawn characters in a very real setting and tells a story which while small in scope is large in importance to the characters which inhabit the story. Enzo is partially a bratty nine year old girl, but there is a hint of sadness and loneliness about her. The same can be said about the compulsive storytelling of Zap and the quietness of Joseph. While Falling Boy is a story of friendship and discovery, it is also a story of sadness as the reader can almost sense this minor chord of dissonance running through the novel.

One other thing that McGhee excels at is building a sense of place. Much of her previous fiction has been set in and around the small town of North Sterns, in the foothills of the Adirondacks Mountains in New York. The sense of North Sterns being a real place with real people was something that permeated her work. Those were characters which continued to have lives and interactions even after the last page was read and the cover was closed. Alison McGhee brings this same sense of place to Minneapolis. While she describes just a corner of Minneapolis near Lake Calhoun, she leaves no doubt in the reader's mind that these characters can be found in Minneapolis and that this corner of Minneapolis is one which could and should exist.

The shifting of the setting from New York to Minnesota is one which I find refreshing as a reader because I work in Minneapolis and I have run the three mile loop around Lake Calhoun. I do not know that particular area very well, but what McGhee describes is a setting which rings true. I suspect that readers outside of the Twin Cities Metro will also have this same feeling that the Lake Calhoun setting is as real as that of North Sterns.

Falling Boy has a very different feel to it than All Rivers Flow to the Sea. I mention this because All Rivers Flow to the Sea was a spectacularly strong piece of fiction brimming with raw power and emotion. Falling Boy is not that sort of story. It is filled with emotion, with sadness and with wonder, but it doesn't have the strength of All Rivers Flow to the Sea. Falling Boy moves like the familiar faces seen around Lake Calhoun, and it delivers a different set of feeling, that while lacking the raw power of All Rivers Flow to the Sea, it is no less strong a piece of fiction. By the time she reveals what exactly happened to Joseph the reader has fallen in love with the melancholy feel of the bakery and the child-centric setting.

As a reader I get excited when I learn Alison McGhee has written another novel because it means that she is delivering up another serving of memorable characters, a moving story, and a strong sense of place where I can smell the bread baking.

Was it beautiful? It was. It is.

-Joe Sherry

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous, April 28, 2007

By	elemenoP (astoria, ny) - See all my reviews

What's not to like? Gorgeous writing, an unusual coming of age tale, and lots of superhero talk. Full of pathos and loveliness.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "And now Joseph's arms were like legs themselves.", February 27, 2007

By	Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In the small world of a Midwestern bakery peopled by troubled children, the grownups seem barely to exist, save for a shadowy presence and the harm they have done their children, a reminder that it is the adults who have the power to heal and to hurt. But in the confines of the fragrant shop, sixteen-year-old Joseph, his spine permanently damaged, moves through the bakery in his wheelchair, any dreams he may have nurtured replaced by the grim reality of his abruptly altered future. Joseph's father, Big, works the night shift at the bakery, leaving his son to fend for himself, Big escaping reality in an alcoholic stupor. Zap, the son of the bakery's owner, is seventeen.

Early mornings find Zap behind the counter preparing for business with a running commentary on the day's events, but mostly speculating on the cause of Joseph's tragedy, which the boy has yet to share. Zap imagines Joseph a superhero injured while performing a great act of courage, but gets no validation from the quiet Joseph. The group is rounded out by Enzo, a small, brittle nine-year old, who waves an automatic pencil in the air to accent her pronouncements on the state of the universe and Joseph's imaged past, where she images he has flown off the earth, soaring through the sky. Enzo has no tolerance for disagreement, madly waving her "clicker' through the air and calling herself the Mighty Thor. Her worldview black and white, it soon becomes clear that the child's emotional pain stimulates her to lash out against anything she cannot control.

Endlessly assaulted with Enzo's outbursts, the trio spends the sweltering summer days in a verbal tug-of-war, the angry girl demanding that Joseph meet the fatuous requirements of superhero, Zap serving as foil for her pain. Joseph refuses to accept the mantle she proffers, trying in vain to convince the girl to accept him as he is. She cannot, her small life confined by confusion and emotional upheaval. Enzo is the catalyst, but it is Joseph who defines the novel, gradually revealing the cause of his accident and the terrible truth of a broken parent. In the author's deft hands, these remarkable characters battle their private demons, finding unexpected strength in the bonds formed of adversity. McGhee taps into the spirit and resourcefulness of childhood, the healing nature of these unlikely friendships a balm to the brutality of life. Luan Gaines/2007.