Customer Reviews

The Shadow Year: A Novel

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

 

 

THE SHADOW YEAR by Jeffrey Ford stands as one of the most striking pieces of fiction I've read so far this year. It's a coming-of-age novel and a statement on dysfunctional families that partially masks itself as a creepy mystery story. It starts out with a face in the window, a prowler in the neighborhood. The time is the 1960s and the location is Long Island, during a kinder, more gentler time when a family's secrets and failings were kept religiously guarded behind closed doors.

I was blown away by the atmosphere and eye for detail Ford packs into his writing. This was my first book by this author, and I was immediately impressed. He possesses the keen vision of Stephen King and doesn't flinch when it comes to exploring personal issues. I got the feeling that a lot of what's in these pages is biographical, and if it isn't, I'd be willing to bet Ford knew a family like this.

Almost. Ford presents a normal abnormal family, then leavens the whole mix with a hint of the supernatural. There's a ghost and the strange powers little sister Mary has, and the eerie presence of Mr. White, a diabolical villain.

But when Ford paints the picture of the family so realistically, most readers are going to get sucked right into his world and forgive the author all of his transgressions. I swallowed the supernatural bits without hesitation because the family were exactly like people I'd grown up with. The father is a workaholic holding down three jobs to get the family by, and so he barely spends any time with his wife or kids. The mother is an alcoholic, and though I would have desperately loved to know why she was, sometimes you just have to accept that there's no answer. The grandparents, Nan and Pop, are on hand to help out, but they're limited.

The narrator, who never named himself, has an older brother named Jim who's daring and audacious, and everything a younger brother could ever dream of being. Mary is the little sister and as odd as they come, while possessing a matriarchal power that both boy are in awe of and seek to protect. As all-knowing as Mary is (and she smokes cigarettes too, which is weird but fits in well with the character), she's also an innocent.

I sat enthralled as I turned the pages, captivated first by the mystery and the threat, then by the narrator's school projects (especially his impromptu clay moon on a stick!), his ongoing battle with a teacher, and his views of the family and how they worked for and against each other.

One of the most original things about the novel is Botch Town, a microcosm created by Jim. It's a replication of the neighborhood where they live. As they sort through the mystery of the prowler, they move the individual figures around to simulate the movements of their neighbors. Unfortunately some turn up missing. Mary has the mysterious power of knowing where they are - even when they're dead.

The threat of Mr. White grows on every page. The kids hunt him through the neighborhood, but he quickly figures out who they are as well and the chase swaps ends. Ford does a lot with the narrator's daily travails as well, putting him in just as much peril from bullies as the prowler/murderer.

I enjoyed this book immensely, but I wanted to know more about some of the characters. I suppose that happens when they appear so real on the page, so I don't want to take anything away from the writing. Ford's other books include award-winning fantasy and Edgar-winning mysteries. He's definitely a writer I'm going to read more from.

THE SHADOW YEAR is an excellent novel that doesn't fit within the restraints of conventional fiction. The book marches to the beat of its own drummer, and the cadence will rivet most readers to the pages either through the elegance of the imperfect past or the chilling menace of a killer on the loose with children in harm's way.

Jeffery Ford captures the thin lines between reality, fantasy and fear that separate childhood from the adult world. The narrator's belief that his sister had powers to predict others behavior, which she revealed by moving figures around Botchtown is exactly the type of connection that we fear and crave as children.
Ford also captures the unique perspective that children hold of adults in their lives, each description of an adult by the narrator, a boy, was right on the mark.
I read most of the book in one sitting. It drew me into its world and was was anxious to find out how it ended. The ending as other reviews noted was not equal to the rest of the book. But the book is more than worth it.

I've read all of Ford's novels and many of his short stories - including the short story that was the basis for The Shadow Year. This novel is his most interesting. It tells a story that isn't centered around what I think of as Ford's specialty, "The Perfect Fool" - malevolent practitioners of physionomy, eugenics or other quackery. Instead this novel puts us in the shoes of three children, through whom we view their adventure and world with a child's mix of clear eyes and whimsy. The novel manages to be sensitive and moving as well as hilarious.

I was also surprised at the memories the story evoked. In the relentless nostalgia of our society where there is no saying or memorable line that hasn't been used for a movie title, Ford's narrative brought back images I hadn't thought of in years.

After I finished, I wondered if I read the same book reviewed by Publisher's Weekly.

While reading this book, I was reminded of reading "Something Wicked This Way Comes," by Ray Bradbury so many years ago. Some of the names, (Jim & Halloway) might've been what did it. Maybe it was the setting or the era. But the shadow year, in a weird way, seemed like it could be some sort of more modern version of the book I once read in highschool.

As I was reading it, the imagery and detail continued to draw me in. The end was, like another reviewer put it, a bit lacking, but not altogether bad. Sometimes that's the best part of being a kid; not really having all the answers, but instead being forced to piece together the truth with a few facts, but more often, a lot of imagination and mystery.

Recommended.

Ford's Long Island is one I knew when I lived there in the early 1960's. The novel shows it to me again - the towns sprung up in what had been potato fields, the communities made up entirely of newcomers. His description of a flea-bitten circus that's pitched its tents on a mud flat in Farmingdale is dead-on. I may have seen it on the same day the author did.

In those suburbs, the family was everything. The one depicted, with an alcoholic mother, a father working three jobs and a pair of grand-parents slowly fading out of the picture, is what would now be called dysfunctional. What Ford does brilliantly is to show how the kids, the narrator who is in sixth grade, his slightly older brother and somewhat younger sister, are thrown onto their own resources, forced into a tight bond, in the face of danger.

And dangers exist in what was supposed to be a paradise free of all the problems of the big cities. Early on in the book a pederast is busted, the main plot line concerns a killer who stalks the neighborhood. It's here that Ford depicts as well as I've seen it done, the tension and fear of a kid with dreadful knowledge he is unable to communicate to any adult.

The novel has a mystery and a ghost. It also has in abundance, the sights, the sounds, the smells and the feel of the early stages of the greatest social experiment of this nation in my lifetime.

4.5 stars

The Shadow Year is a charming coming-of-age tale about the 6th grade year of an average American boy (we never learn his name) growing up in the 1960s. This year isn't average, though, because there are some strange things going on in his small town. As he navigates his way around mundane matters such as an alcoholic manic depressive mother, a father who holds down three jobs, live-in grandparents, and unpleasant teachers, he's also concerned with a prowler, a classmate who disappeared, and a strange suspicious man who drives an eerie white car. Things get really creepy when he realizes that the weird things happening around town seem to be linked to the way his possibly-autistic / possibly-savant little sister moves the cars and people around in his older brother's replica of their town which he works on in their basement.

The Shadow Year feels more like mainstream fiction -- it's mostly about coming of age, family relationships, and living in a small town. Except for the wonder at Mary's abilities, the supernatural elements are down-played and don't become obvious until the end. The novel reminds me very much of A Christmas Story -- that classic movie about Ralphie who wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas ("You'll shoot your eye out!"). Similarly, Jeffrey Ford fills his story with over-the-top characters who are fun to read about but who you're glad you don't live with and who you have a hard time believing could all co-exist in the same small town.

Also similarly, most of the plot revolves around the day to day events in a 6th grade boy's life: waiting for the ice cream man, trying to complete school assignments with a minimal amount of effort, getting picked on by older kids, skipping church, sneaking out of the house, and trying to keep up with his brave and reckless older brother. These little slices of life are funny, poignant, and so beautifully and vividly described that they often brought a smile to my face and occasionally brought tears to my eyes. Here's a passage about the ice cream man:

Occasionally Mel would try to be pleasant, but I think the paper canoe of a hat he wore every day soured him. He also wore a blue bow tie, a white shirt, and white pants. His face was long and crooked, and at times, when the orders came to fast and the kids didn't have the right change, the bottom half of his face would slowly melt -- a sundae abandoned at the curb.... In a voice that came straight from his freezer, he called my sister, Mary, and all the other girls "sweetheart."

The Shadow Year is worth reading simply for Jeffrey Ford's excellent imagery and atmosphere, powerful prose, and razor-sharp descriptions of life we can relate to, but it's also a good mystery with plenty of tension and suspense. The relationship we observe between the boy and his older brother and little sister is truly touching. I have to add, also, that our ability to engage with a character whose name we never know is surprising and indicates Ford's confidence and courage.

Despite its subject material, The Shadow Year is not a book for kids because of the language and sexual content. I listened to Audible Frontier's production of The Shadow Year which was read by Kevin T. Collins who has an astonishing range of voices at his command. His excellent narration definitely added to my reading enjoyment and I'll be looking for his name in the future.

I'm already on to my second Jeffrey Ford novel. He's now on my list of must-be-read authors.

I read this book a while ago, during the 'lazy, hazy' days of summer, but it stayed with me long enough to push me into a review. As I read it, I found myself floating through the story with the protagonist, seeing it through his eyes, feeling the air, smelling the scents and hearing the sounds. To me, when I can see, hear and smell and touch while reading the words on paper it's the sign of great writing. And that The Shadow Year is indeed--great writing. The story was gripping and drew me in by the deliberate, slithering presentation of the events of the plot, just like the waters of a slow river.

The story started as a summer of a specific year, in a specific location. But, as it moved on, it was obvious the result of deep and distant memories, the way I recall my childhood at times--a mystical place, yet very real, snatches of sights, sounds and events. This novel is written like a tapistry of those moments of memory.

The ending left me wondering for a long time after. To this day, I think of it. That indeed is the sign of a good book.

I picked up the book because one of its reviews had compared The Shadow Year to Stephen King's The Body and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, two of the greatest novels (and movies).

It is most definitely similar to those books, following the life of an 11 year-old boy, his older brother, Jim, and his little sister, Mary, during what he calls The Shadow Year. A typical boy in 1960's Long Island, he knows all the characters in his town, and his brother even made a detailed model of the town and its inhabitants on a big table in their basement. Mary starts to move the clay figures around the model. When a stranger, Mr. White, comes to town, the first of several clay figures is missing from the board. Only Mary knows where the figure, and the boy whom it represents, has gone. The author touches ever so slightly on the mystical explanations behind these disappearances, which is one of the reasons why I enjoyed the book. It made you wonder, it made you think, and it made me jump at bumps in the night.

Similar genre, but not nearly in the same league as Lee and King. I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong. I was especially intrigued by the relationship the boy had with his siblings, despite their father's absence and their mother's nightly drinking. There were even times when my heart raced because I was truly a little frightened myself. I found the end a little predictable, which took a little of the wind out of my sails, but all in all, an enjoyable read.

[...]

I wish I could give this something more like a 3.5 because I did like it more than not. I really enjoyed the narrator and his siblings. The book has been compared to a more famous book, To Kill a Mockingbird, but it's not that groundbreaking (or that good), but it has the same kind of premise.

Young, adventurous kids seek to solve a mystery about someone strange in their Eastern town. It's a nice period piece, told mostly in what I would call small vignettes, that are woven together to create the overall novel.

I think the main plot, that of a serial killer, is the weakest part of the book, but the characters and the odd ball people that they interact with make it worth the read. I laughed several times at the child-like interactions of the main three characters.

I would recommend it to my kid to read.

The story of the narrator's sixth grade year in the New York suburbs in the 1960's. In addition to dealing with issues with school, bullies, and his alcoholic mother, he and and brother Jim and sister Mary are searching for a prowler that has been seen in the neighborhood. That search becomes much more frightening when they realize that a serial killer may actually be stalking their town. They are aided in their search by "Botch Town", a model of the neighborhood that Jim has built in the basement. Mary seems to have the ability to place the model citizens of Botch Town in the same locations as the actual people of the town. The fantastic elements of the book are fairly muted, however, and could almost be seen as coming from the child's viewpoint of the narrator.

The start of the book seemed fairly slow with an introduction to various quicks of the narrator's family and his neighbors, but eventually the story does become interesting with a number of suspenseful scenes as the mysterious Mr. White stalks the children through the town. The theme seems to be the loss of innocence as the narrator learns about death, sex and the fallibility of adults during the course of the year which ends his childhood. My main reservation about the book is that although it is well-written, it didn't seem to do anything really new. I've read novels with similar settings and characters by Stephen King and others that cover the same themes, and I don't think I gained any new insight from this story.