Amazon.com Review
Sometimes Joel Dunn is "All Clear" and sometimes he isn't. His wife, his daughter and his three sons all know the signs: when he's "gone off" he isn't All Clear, and nobody knows when he will be again.
If You Want Me To Stay is narrated by Joel Junior, whose words start the book: "That morning my daddy went of for the worst time." Joel Junior and his little brothers Carter and Tank lock themselves in the truck, hoping that Daddy will shake off the voices. According to Joel Junior's best lights about Daddy, "He is just following orders."
This time, the orders take a dreadful turn. Carter, hot and sweaty and sick of hiding out in the truck, leaves and heads back into the house, gaily calling out "He ain't even in here." His father grabs him around the neck, lops off his hair with a huge pair of scissors and cuts off his ear lobe in the bargain. Joel Junior and Tank see this and take off in the truck. A 14-year-old boy with no license and a little kid in tow, headed for who knows where. Some months before, his mother had gone off and no word had been heard from her. Then, his older sister left and she also disappeared. Joel Junior was the sane person in charge: loving, hating, frightened, brave, responsible, and wishing someone else would take over.
What follows is a stream-of-consciousness riff, a picaresque journey shot through with the soul music their Daddy taught them to love. Joel Junior sometimes cannot get the music out of his head; at other times he depends on the music to see him through the hard parts. He decides that he will search for their mother, who will surely take them in. His first stop is at his sister's, whom he has found through a friend. She tells him where to find their mother, and that the trip will be fruitless. He leaves Tank with her and, in a fugue state, hitchhikes his way to another town. He encounters a good-natured trucker, a kindly Mexican man, a "Streetclothes" policeman, a junkie alcoholic--and he believes that they are all leading him to his mother.
The inexorable ending of this story will break your heart, but it will also make you laugh, sometimes ruefully. The music in Joel Junior's head is telling him about love and, with no teachers other than soul singers, he is trying to make it up as he goes along. Read this short novel in one sitting; it'll knock you out. --Valerie Ryan
From Publishers Weekly
Writing in a Faulknerian first person that conveys the 14-year-old protagonist's mental escape artistry, Parker (
Hello Down There) explores the bonds of a family wracked by mental illness and abandonment in this fully realized fourth novel. In the 1970s rural South, Joel Dunn Jr. takes care of his two younger brothers, Tank and Carter, whenever his father "goes off" and, for example, exorcises their TV. Their mother has long since left for parts unknown; older sister Angie has also bolted without leaving word of her whereabouts. When Joel Sr. hurts Carter during one of his episodes, Joel Jr. packs Tank into their father's truck and sets out to find their mother. That he abandons Carter in the process does not quite penetrate the set of maternal fantasies steadily running in Joel Jr.'s head to the accompaniment of a plethora of Stax/Volt hits. The two find Angie and meet a variety of colorful characters, but the point here is Parker's flawless free and direct vernacular, which exquisitely renders the pain and resulting self-delusion that fuel Joel's quest, his fantasies, his sense of responsibility and his conflicting wish to be taken care of. Gothic undertones adequately prepare one for the book's final, violent pages.
(Sept. 16) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
