Customer Reviews

An Ocean in Iowa

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The simple, easy pace of AN OCEAN IN IOWA and the discretion Peter Hedges shows in revealing just enough are what make this book an absolute gem. While we are left to see the world of Scotty Ocean through his seven-year-old eyes, Hedges drops enough clues so that our more experienced eyes can pick out the many details that Scotty does not. This book is a must read for any child from a broken home as it handles its harsh subject with humor and immense amounts of understanding. Its one of those books that leaves you certain that all its characters really do exist, and what's more that you've met them all at some point in your own life.

Caitlin Cahalan March 4, 1999 Book Review Mrs. Anderson

Seventh Heaven in "Iowa" An Ocean in Iowa by Peter Hedges ***** 5 stars This novel is a fantastic story about the life of one young boy and I recommend it to everyone. "Seven is going to be my year." That is what Scotty Ocean announced at the beginning of Peter Hedges' novel An Ocean in Iowa. Scotty wants to be seven more than anything else in the world and the novel takes us through all of the ups and downs of being seven. The story is told from Scotty's point of view and it offers us insight into the mind of an innocent, wide-eyed little boy. The novel takes us back to the late sixties, the days of the moon landing, A Family Affair, and Bonanza. The story centers on the Ocean family, a group of different personalities living in the same house in rural Iowa. Although the story is told from Scotty's point of view, we are able to take a look into the minds and hearts of the rest of the family: his father, the Judge; his mother, Joan; and his two older sisters, Claire and Maggie. We are taken through a year in the life of the Oceans which also happens to Scotty's seventh year. This year happens to be the year Joan decides to leave the family. Suddenly, the Ocean children are left to live with their loving yet distant father. As the story unfolds, we see the Judge becoming more open to his children. We also see a development in Scotty's character. Peter Hedges has written a beautiful character that will capture your hearts the minute you are introduced to him. Scotty is convinced that being seven means being a man. ("Seven is old enough to tie his own shoes.") His character goes from a six-year boy who, in Scotty's own opinion, drove his mother away to a seven-year old man who can handle anything. Hedges adds humor to the somewhat serious nature of this novel. The reader cannot help but smile when Scotty paints a nude portrait of himself or when he refuses to take off his Minnesota Vikings helmet. The novel is written with an amazing amount of style, yet there is a simplicity to it which keeps us turning the pages. Perhaps the novel is a reminder of what childhood was like and what thoughts ran through our heads. One would think a seven-year-old character is too simple and unimportant to write a novel about. However, Scotty's character has complex thoughts, emotions, and adult ideas and visions. Scotty refuses to turn eight and he is willing to go to drastic measures to prevent it from occurring. Hedges has included a theme throughout the novel that implies that you can only be young once. He is challenging us to look at ourselves now and telling us to enjoy what we have right at this moment. We cannot stay in one place forever but, once we leave, we will always have the memories to look back on. Just as Scotty Ocean cannot be seven forever, we can be sure that he will have plenty of memories of being seven. Maybe it is time he realized that eight may be great after all.

This book was amazing. It tells the story of little Scotty Ocean, a boy who is dying to be seven. A little boy whose family is about to be pulled apart by his mother's drinking and life will forever change and in the end maybe will want to turn eight. If you read, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, you definitly not be dissapointed by An Ocean in Iowa.

I finished this novel last night. I was very impressed with the characterization; the main character is seven years old and has an innocent perspective on the world but the author still shows us the not-so-innocent events and people around him. The theme of family dysfunction is not unique in modern fiction, but the glorious simplicity of the prose most certainly is. I bought this book because I enjoyed Hedge's other novel, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, so much. It did not disappoint me in the least.

Scotty Ocean is the youngest child of a family in rural Iowa. He is turning seven, which he is convinced is going to be a great year for him. Instead we see it as a year of change for him, his mother whom he adores, moves out and his father is left to rear the family.

It was a fascinating insight into the mind of a young child who is going through huge emotional changes. Scotty's thoughts and actions were quite believable throughout the book.

This book looked to be a simple quick read. I picked it up after reading an excellent review in Entertainment Weekly. I found that is was incredibly vivid and indepth. A study in the way disfunction set in on young children, but yet it wasn't about that completely. As this story unfolded I found myself looking at a character who is the hero of his own life and when he can't be the hero of his mother's life he falls to pieces. I was blown away by how tender this book was, but I was even more impressed at how it was not heavy handed and full of tired generalizations. I give it an "A".

Hedges' unpretentious prose brilliantly and effortlessly illuminates the Ocean family in elegant, endearing detail. Scotty and his lovingly abstract perceptions of his world are beautifully portrayed and we are left to understand Scotty's actions as we unconciously relate to our own childhood. "An Ocean In Iowa" is a resplendent, touching novel which perhaps shows that, when you're seven years old, one's methods of deciphering the world around oneself are often unconventional, but, just maybe, there is an understandable logic which transcends most adults attempts to survive the often oblique, difficult world that surrounds them. A timeless story of childhood innocence and confusion which manages to be concurrently both heartwarming and heartbreaking.

Young Scotty Ocean isn't quite sure what he means when he announces, before his seventh birthday, that seven will be his year. But from the beginning of An Ocean in Iowa, when novelist and playwright Peter Hedges establishes a tone of uneasy stillness and quiet disarray, the reader knows that the year won't be the one Scotty imagined.With stunning simplicity of language, Hedges, the author of What's Eating Gilbert Grape, crafts a story of a year in the life of the Ocean family -- Scotty; his two older sisters; his father, an inflexible and emotionally austere judge; and his mother, an alcoholic artist - and sets a stage that's authentic America in 1969. On television, "Father Knows Best" has evolved into the motherless, but equally idyllic, "Family Affair." The Salem girl puffs seductively through commercials. Apollo II is escaping the earth's atmosphere. And Vietnam has invaded not only America's living room, but its psyche. In West Glen, Iowa, Scotty is adoring his mother. He entertains her with his "seven dance," his "kissing machine." He gleefully clutches the stick shift in her car so they can shift gears together. He embraces the comfortable predictability of her excessive drinking, smoking and painting. Unbidden, he retrieves and opens her beer, crushes and hides the empties, cleans up the aftermath of her excesses. His diligence in "being good" is worth it, he knows, because it will keep her happy and loving him.But Scotty's goodness doesn't keep his mother from abandoning her family and her art to go wherever it is she's going. And he's sure it's all his fault. "If only I had done more of this, less of that, he thought. And he made a mental list, indelibly scrawling it onto his heart. If only he hadn't used the kissing machine on her all those times. If only he hadn't done the seven dance, or licked the mailbox, then maybe she'd have stayed." He decides to be even better.As his fa! ther and sisters cope in their own ways, Scotty becomes increasingly more desperate. When his expertly performed chores don't bring her home, he begins acting out at school. He cultivates a friendship with the older kid next door, the one with all the toys and gadgets who gives his sister the creeps. He tries to make a classmate's mother his own. He hides in his special place, hurts another child, threatens to destroy his family. Still, his absent mother wallows in alcoholic despair while his father, in increasingly grandiose attempts to maintain control, screamingly tiptoes around it.Hedges's masterful infusion of period details steeps the story in a time of societal changes that drastically affected the American family. With poignant clarity, he explores the impact, on child through adult, of mother's exit from the kitchen to "find herself" and fatherŐs entrance into the domestic arena. Of war's collision with family, and its smooth travels through commercialism. Of materialism, of rootlessness.He also eloquently examines the meaning, and the role in life, of art. As Scotty's mother tells her children, "`There's nothing worse than art that no one sees.'" But thanks to the deftness with which Hedges paints this powerfully evocative story, we see the art clearly in An Ocean in Iowa. And it shines.

This is one of those rare novels that actually reminds you--with occasional moments of devastating embarrassment, bouts of giddy laughter, and pangs of deep melancholy--just what it was to be a kid. As he proved in his brilliant first novel, "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" (and the screenplay for the wonderful film adaptation), and his highly-acclaimed 2003 independent film, "Pieces of April," Peter Hedges has mastered the delicate art of conjuring charming but utterly realistic characters and portraying, with great tenderness, the complicated dynamics of troubled families. From the discovery that one's family is not an invulnerable bastion of loving safety to the sudden, almost-mystical epiphanies of the erotic undercurrent running through all of life, Hedges has here captured, with breathtaking authenticity, the unique sensation of growing up. At the same time, the story is firmly and convincingly embedded in a specific time and place, suburban Iowa in the late 1960s. Hedges includes a rich but never distracting veneer of historical and pop culture references. He also peppers the narrative with certain toy and product names familiar to the era, something that does a great deal to convey both the growing commercialization of American society at the time and the innocence that once seemed an inherent part of the modern world's marketing machine--aimed primarily at the young, as so much advertising and entertainment is. In the end, one finds that "An Ocean in Iowa" is the antithesis of the plot-driven novel. Rather, it is something that is often more difficult to achieve without resulting to cheap melodrama or sentimentality: an engaging, evocative character study--or, as such stories always become for Hedges, a family study. Hedges has one simple goal: seeing young Scotty Ocean through his seventh year, and past all threatens him and his family, without permanent damage befalling the dreamer inside him. It is a testimony to his mastery of the novelist's craft that we worry, all the way to the end, whether Hedges can actually pull this off.

Avoiding any chance of the infamous "sophomore slump" after "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," Peter Hedges has created quite a fantastic book with "An Ocean in Iowa." Liberally drawing on, as most good authors do, his own experiences as a child, Hedges has created a realistic slice of life. Through the youthful perception of Scotty Ocean, Hedges relates the struggle to stay young (7 to be exact) and to avoid the rigors of growing up. On the cusp of my last year in the same West Des Moines school district Hedges went through, I find his story especially applicable. He hits on the many injustices facing Scotty (and most kids) without preaching about them. He simply states them as events of the story. This restraint makes Hedges' novel all the more poignant because it emphasizes the sad fact that Scotty Ocean has no true voice. Dealing with a strict judge as a father and an alcoholic mother who is unsure of her own desires, Scotty struggles to simply remain seven years old and no one is there to listen. Hedges wields the various conflicts within "An Ocean in Iowa" with both poise and a tremendous sense of beauty. The writing is easily-understood, but never simple. Hedges' attention to pertinent details paints vivid pictures that draw a reader to the characters and events of the book, especially the title character. Though the novel is written in third person, it is the special kind of third person that is slanted by the perceptions of whichever character is being focused on. Most of the time this is Scotty. Demonstrating a great understanding of children, Hedges creates a piece marked by the innocence of youthful perspective. With simple care, he follows the Scotty's gradual transformation as the child strives to deal with the curveballs he's been thrown. Following the roller-coaster pattern of life, "An Ocean in Iowa" has happy moments to balance the sad ones. Hedges captures the joy of little things with a strong sense of style. Most impo! rtantly, Hedges brings to the forefront the irony that is life. Maybe it is simply being the product of the same town and high school as Hedges, but I find his writing humorous and insightful for its similarity to my own life. This novel is only kept from a perfect "10" rating by its abrupt ending that left me looking for more. However, this only continues the pattern of realism of the book as I hoped for something different for Scotty.