The Moonlight Man (Laurel-Leaf contemporary fiction) [Paperback]

Paula Fox (Author)

Book Description

Series: Laurel-Leaf contemporary fiction | Publication Date: March 1, 1988

At the end of the school term, Catherine waits with her bags for her father to pick her up. She waits and waits... for three weeks, making excuses for him and hoping he'll show up.



Harry Ames, Catherine's father, calls one night, and she's soon on her way to Nova Scotia, where Mr. Ames lives in a small house. When Catherine's parents divorced she was very young, and so she barely knows this man, her father. Then one night she finds herself driving in an old car with three drunk and delirious men in the backeseat, her father among them. Catherine's fear and anger envelope her, and she thinks her mother must have been right about him.



But Harry Ames fills Catherine's days with his love and enthusiasm for poetry, nature, and travel as they share wild, sunlit times together near the sea. Then at night, there is always the fear...Will Catherine ever understand her father? Can she ever begin to know this moonlight man?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A new Paula Fox novel is always a cause for celebrationshe is one of America's most talented writers. Her past books for young adults (One-Eyed Cat, The Slave Dancer, A Place Apart, et al.) have won her numerous awards, including the Newbery Medal, and her latest ranks as one of the best she's ever written. Looking forward to spending the summer with the father she barely knows, 15-year-old Catherine is left to wait for three long weeks at her Montreal boarding school, with no word from him to explain his absence. Finally he calls, and she meets him in Nova Scotia, beginning an extraordinary summer. Harry Ames is elegant, poetic, mysterious, quixotica complex figure Catherine "studies like a book." Her parents were divorced when she was three; she wants to see what it was in her father that her mother once loved. It wasn't his drinkingHarry goes on binges that horrify and repulse Catherine; it wasn't his facile ability to lie; it wasn't the way "he thrived on chaos." But she learns that he takes nothing in life for granted; he challenges her to examine her perceptions and actions carefully. Fox's subtle use of language and unique storytelling gifts create a world so complete and so rich that the reader hates to leave it. At one point, Catherine reflects that her father "seemed about to lead her into a dance to music she had never heard." This story, too, is music as we only rarely hear it.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

Grade 6-10 Fox has always been adept at writing apparently simple stories which on closer examination prove to explore the essential meaning of relationships through carefully chosen incident and to illuminate our understanding of the human condition through the vicissitudes of her characters. In this case, 15-year-old Catherine Ames vacations in a cottage in Nova Scotia with a father whom she barely knowsa failed writer with a poet's philosophical tongue who is an alcoholic. A competent child/woman, Catherine, in a few days of trying to understand and cope, lives through the classic kaleidoscope of responses of family members to alcoholics: denial, anger, fear, loneliness, exhaustion, disgust, pity, grief, sympathy. Harry Ames binges, blames, makes unreasonable demands, apologizes, reforms, relapses. Catherine succeeds in admiring her father for his talents while deploring his behavior, strengthened by knowing that their time together will end soon. And end it does, in apparent friendship, yet Harry Ames' last words to his daughter suggest that he will not see her again. There's enough detail and incident about alcoholism here for a case study, but the story rises above the clinical in poignantly dramatizing the separation that differing life patterns can inflict on those who love one another. Joanna Rudge Long, New York Public Library
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Laurel Leaf (March 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440200792
• ISBN-13: 978-0440200796
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,347,493 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Book, December 10, 2011

By 

Jean C. Townsend (New Hampshire) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Moonlight Man (Laurel-Leaf contemporary fiction) (Paperback)

The previous reviewer clearly misunderstood the rating system and gave this extraordinary book a 1 when s/he meant to rate it as a 5. Moonlight Man is an excellent treatment of the predicament of a child with a parent who is deeply flawed yet has admirable qualities and talents that have gone to waste. Like most of Fox's work, it is probably based on autobiographical elements. 15-year-old Catherine waits for her father to pick her up at boarding school so she can spend summer vacation with him. Out of love for him, she manages to deceive both those at her boarding school and her mother of the fact that he is three weeks late in picking her up. What follows is a harrowing, heartwarming, and tragic story of a child mustering resources to cope with things she should not have to cope with as she deals with the issues of love, loyalty, and letting go. It reminds me of Jeanette Walls's depiction of her parents, especially the father, in her memoir, The Glass Castle.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Moonlight Man, November 4, 2004

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Moonlight Man (Turtleback)

The Moonlight Man by Paula Fox is a very good book. I recommend this book for 13 through 15 year olds. Most of the time i would just sit on my couch and just read for hours and if you now me i don't read that often.
It is about this 15 year old girl named Catherine who is going to her dads for the summer. Her dad, Mr. Amos, is not what I would call the best dad in the world. He really dosen't have muck experience being a father cause he has never been there for her. But just read and read to see how she and her dad really bond. At the beginning they do not get along that well or well when he driks that's is. Many wild and crazy things happen sence she only sees her dad a couple oftimes per year ans scence it takes place in Canada she can drive. Most o fhte time she is a designated driver for her dad and his friends.
This is a very good book. I don't think I can tell you any more other wise I would give it all away. It is a very good book I would read it 100 more times if i had to. It's a great book. Those are the reasons I recommend The Moonlight Man by Paula Fox.