Customer Reviews

The Sparkling-Eyed Boy: A Memoir of Love, Grown Up

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"The Sparkling-eyed Boy" inhabits the same reserved space in my
personal text-map as Billy Collins' poetry. Or imagine David Eggars
in his more lyrical moments. Benson manages to take plain language
and do wonderfully beautiful things with it. This is from the end,
describing life/personhood/existence:

"That is my problem: I have been looking shard by shard, but stand
back and I will have the whole, fluid mosaic. But I'm afraid there
is no perspective from which we can view every angle of a moment, a
year, a life, or the life of another. And there is no answer if I
have to answer the question myself."

Yikes! This hits exactly right! When I am at a loss for words, the
best I can do is quote from people much more skilled with language.
Benson has given me a lot to say. :-)

This is a 'small' but big book, read it carefully. This is not to
say that it's difficult to read, more that the prose has subtle
but significant power. Maybe my sense of this comes with particular
resonances with my own life -- I also recall midwestern lake summers --
but Benson makes these personal memories relevant in a way that should
intersect with anyone reading her book. It's most worthy of the
Katharine Nason Prize. I'm really looking forward to reading
Benson's future work.

This is truly a wonderful book. Each of its sections is a lyrical essay on place, time, the burden of choice and the elusive nature of personal identity. Not a page goes by without a line or two of startling beauty and truth. Also, for someone who has experienced the part of America where lakes are seas and forests stretch north to the Artic Circle, reading "The Sparkling-eyed Boy" was a bittersweet reminder of that dazzling land.

This is a beautiful book. It's much different from Ted Conover's books (he selected it for a prize), which are terrific but more journalistic. SEB is a very personal story, told through a series of chapters or essays (and occasional fantasies) that don't necessarily follow one to the other. While I wouldn't necessarily say that this is an "experimental" book, it's definitely playing with the "normal" way of writing a memoir. After awhile you understand that a larger story is unfolding, but that it's about much more than just Benson's first love. It's about a place and time that has become mythical for her as she's grown up and away from the people and places that formed her. It makes me think of my own brief summers at the Jersey Shore, a place I haven't been back to in years but that I still remember in a strangely sad, hazy way as having been important. It seems like a particularly American story to me, where class and mobility and property and wealth and education are all tangled up and it's difficult to know where you fit in or where you'll end up or why. A complex, lovely book.

It is maybe surprising, considering the comparatively few people that live above the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan, that there have been a bunch of books by younger writers in the last few years about and from Michigan's Upper Peninsula (mostly poetry--see Catie Rosemurgy, Cynie Cory, Jonathan Johnson, and Beth Roberts, for starters). This is--as far as I know--the only recent memoir about the place, and it's more a sort of extended meditation than a memoir proper. Still, it is lovely and engrossing. She's conscious of herself as a tourist (both of the place and of the boy, and of her own memories, even), and this is a tour I think you'll want to take with her. Be aware that it does take some liberties with the form (it's absolutely lyrical and likely nearly poetry at times, as the reviews above allude to--and it's not exactly a memoir of things that happened), but this book is rich and good and well worth your time.

One of the pro's is also a con, that I continued to get thrown out of the story by the beauty of the prose, the quotes that stuck in my mind until I had to mark a page to come back to later, so I could continue the story. A mix of fact & fantasy, unlike any memoir or autobiography one might expect, at times one is lost as to which is real and which isn't. An idealized look at a past almost-love that is bittersweet about the lost opportunities one can only see from either an adult or outside perspective. However, many readers will be able to relate to that sense of loss, and the adult acceptance of the past we can't change or re-do. Definitely recommended reading for anyone interested in poetry, writing, memoirs, autobiographies, personal non-fiction & essays.

Finally, here are examples of the prose my mind kept becoming stuck on, truly brilliant writing that was as beautiful as the story being told.

"When you leave the place you will only later call home, you become, rather suddenly, though you might not know it for quite some time...like a fish without scales, the naked diamonds of its puckered skin flashing their ascent from the bottom to the air-choked top...like a flock of birds with pebble-filled bones--though the stones themselves may be quite lovely, the birds plummet toward the ground as if they had suddenly fallen in love with it. Once there, they will embrace it, wings wide and necks crooked in touchingly naive surprise...like a tiny country that can find itself on no map or atlas. It wonders, was it a dream? Those years of living and naming and fighting and crying. And the tales we tell of our headdresses and the ways we sing ourselves to sleep...like a river damned, swelling like a goiter, watching its sickly abdomen trail out the other side, raging under the pressure of itself upon itself, wishing for a pin a tooth an awl a tiny hole an eyelash crack...like a fish scaled...But the news is not all bad. Though you cannot rescale yourself, though you cannot go home, you may never know yourself better than when you are about to float, white on a streak of lake, breathing like a beast." [Pg. 3-4]

"The moon is the heart of the love of the world", I say from my dusty patch of grass next to my rented house in NJ...

"It wells in compassion, dries into a slivered ache, and wells again...Tonight I cannot say, Isn't it sad and funny and incontestable that we are piercing our eyes with streetlights and headlights and city lights and letting them bleed all over our sunken cheeks... Tonight I must put away irony because my heart is a sliver of an ache." [Pg. 17]

This is beautiful and brave writing. You can see that the author has a poet's soul. She creates delicious sentences that make you want to just eat up the page. It reminds me of Toni Morrison. Plus she tackles the big stuff of adolescence - love and betrayal and secrets and insecurities. This would be a great book for college writing programs. It's a different type of autobiography, and it would help students to see someone break the rules and truly unleash herself on the page. Don't miss out on this true treat.

Someone recently asked me my favorite book of all time, and i said this one!! I know, that may sound "shallow," as in why didnt i choose some classic, something much longer, or a much 'harder read.' This book just moved me, stayed with me, and has the largest amount of wonderful quotes that i refer back to time and time again. I guess i'm a romantic, but i love the style of writing, and i also had a summer home 'at the shore,' and can SO relate. I keep this book to re-read, and have given copies to friends. I think every woman who has loved a man, needs to read it. Treat yourself!!