Customer Reviews

When Madeline Was Young: A Novel

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

As I read this book, When Madeline Was Young, I felt as though I was lost, wandering through a forest, searching for something - a beautiful butterfly, a perfect flower, a mystical cottage. But there's nothing there. It's just a forest full of a confusing tangle of leaves and vines and nothing mystical at all. And that's how this book is written. It is a tangle of thoughts and words, spread from the first page to the last. Nothing special at all.

I've read all of Jane Hamilton's books. I loved The Book of Ruth. Adored A Map of the World. They were both wonderful and I will always have positive comments for them, but I doubt I will ever buy another book by Ms. Hamilton. It's not that I want a "formula" book. But I do want to read something that I can relate to and I don't relate to this at all.

I don't like Mac, the narrator. His mother is just plain strange and not endearing or believable at all. I can't stand Buddy, his cousin. The rest of the characters I barely know and, quite frankly, don't want to get to know. Perhaps I've changed since her first book came out. Perhaps the author has. But whatever the differences, my love of Jane Hamilton's books has ended. Sadly.

The writing was very disjointed in my opinion. I had to read and re-read many sentences to figure out what the author was trying to say. It was a struggle to read. No likeable characters. I made it to the part where it was introduced that Madeline slept with the ex-husband and current wife. Give me a break! I moved on immediately. Too many good books waiting for me to waste time on this absurd tale.

What Gertrude Stein said about Oakland -- there's not enough "there" there -- is true for "When Madeline Was Young." There's just not enough to grab onto in this book, which I very much wanted to like. I'm a big fan of Jane Hamilton, but this book just doesn't have enough plot points, or enough characterization. It's a novella, not a novel, an intriguing idea without any real development, just a series of incidents set in different decades. For a terrific read about the effect of a mentally disabled sibling on a family, I strongly suggest Sue Miller's "Family Pictures."

In When Madeline Was Young, Jane Hamilton creates one of the more unusual American families that readers will find in recent fiction. Their story begins with the 1943 bicycle accident that left newlywed Madeline Maciver forever trapped inside the mind of a seven-year-old child, an accident that shaped the Maciver family in ways that no one could have foreseen. Aaron Maciver, her husband, determined to do right by Madeline despite the fact her parents write her out of their own lives, refuses to even consider the option of placing her in any kind of institution. At the hospital, during the early days after Madeline's accident, Aaron is comforted by talking to Julia, a nurse whom he briefly met at his wedding, and they find themselves falling in love.

When Julia eventually becomes the second Mrs. Maciver, she and Aaron agree that Madeline must remain a part of their new family and she effectively becomes their first "child," something that does not seem at all unusual to the son and daughter who complete the family. It is through the eyes of their son Mac that we learn what happens to this remarkable family for the next several decades. Most of the book is set in the fifties and sixties, two decades that Hamilton recreates in a way that reminds the reader just how different they were from each other. Through Mac's memories of his childhood and teen years, she contrasts the enthusiasm and innocence of the fifties with the angst and anger that the Viet Nam war created in the sixties.

This was not the novel I expected it to be. I was hoping that Hamilton would tell more of the story through the eyes of Madeline herself, offering some insight into what it would be like to suffer the kind of injury that Madeline suffered, but she became much more of a secondary character than I wanted her to be. With Mikey O'Day, Madeline's brain damaged boyfriend, Hamilton did, however, create one of the more memorable characters that I have encountered in a long while. The always happy Mikey O'Day, a man who loved singing in public and who saw Madeline as the love of his life, was sheer joy in his innocence and turned out to be my favorite character in the entire book.

In reality, When Madeline Was Young is an ordinary book about an extraordinary subject. It could have been so much more if Hamilton had focused more on Madeline and less on the things that made the Macivers just like every other family in the fifties and sixties. The Macivers were different and it is those differences that I wanted to learn about.

Examines unusual characters, circumstances, and relationships that distinguish the Maciver family across five decades. Hamilton's choice to tell the saga in limited third person perspective, through the character of "Mac," is unfortunate. Consequently, the novel lacks the thematic depth that could have been achieved with an omniscient point of view and the insight that could have been gained by assigning the title character narrative duties. Ultimately, the novel is about as tedious, meandering, and "distinctive" as any story about any American family in the second half of the twentieth century.

I loved other Jane Hamilton books that I have read; I greatly enjoyed both The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World. Based on my experiences with those books and with the synopsis of this book, I had expected a story that would revolve solely around Madeline. A great deal of the book, though, seemed to be devoted to pro- and anti-war sentiments of the Maciver family and Aunt Figgy's family (the Eastman/Fullers). My eyes glaze over when I get to those Vietnam bits, and I find myself glossing over them the same way that I gloss over the Civil War descriptions in Gone With the Wind. (But I am pretty much a Neanderthal reader, I guess.)

I have loved each and every one of Jane Hamilton's other novels and highly recommend them: The Book of Ruth, A Map of the World, Short History of a Prince and Disobedience. This book, sadly, does not rank among them. It feels forced and uninteresting, with outlandish and unrecognizable characters and scenarios. I've already paid for it, so I'll probably try to finish it, but don't waste your time or money. Read another Hamilton instead.

Jane Hamilton has done her readers a great favor with her latest work. In exquisitely describing a loving family living in the complexity of mid-20th c. America, she allows us to enter into a family which beautifully ties itself to each of its individual members. I loved this book and didn't want it to end. Mac, the narrator, is the product of parents who live the values they hold dear; his reflections on his childhood and his adult family life show that the lessons took hold. The parents' political beliefs are an extension of the way they see the world as it should be -- a nurturing and hospitable place for everyone. It's no Utopia, though, and Hamilton's keen observation of family dynamics engages the reader in the confusions and conflicts of this mid-western family, shedding light on life's complexities throughout the unfolding of this quietly compelling story. This is a fine read!

Glad to see I wasn't the only reader disappointed by this book. I have truly loved all of Hamilton's previous works, which makes the disappointment in this one even that much deeper. Whose story is this? Mac's? Julia's? The ever-present debate between war and peace? It's certainly not Madeline's story. The real question is - who cares? I found it difficult to connect with or care about any of the characters at all, and the tangets Hamilton goes on - Mac's family, Louise as a cellist, Julia's war discussions - detracted from what I felt was the main story. Although it was difficult to grasp what that main story was supposed to be. Don't waste your time on this book. Read, or re-read, Short History of a Prince or Map of the World instead.

You grow up, you get married to the woman of your dreams. But then all of a sudden she has a bicycle wreck that leaves her living life with a 6-year-old mentality. What do you do? Do you stay married? What happens to your wife? We find in this touching story that the decision of one man was to take care of his wife as she was his own child. He raised her with his children (from a second marriage) and loved her nonstop.

Mac is this man's son who grew up thinking that Madeline was his sister. Mac took Madeline to the park, to the ice cream parlor, and defended her against bullies who called her dumb or tried to take advantage of her. Somewhere along the way, Mac learned the truth about Madeline, but still continued to love her like a sister. Mac takes us through his journey as he remembers it when he gets the call that his cousin's son has been killed in action. Mac tries to decide whether or not to go to the funeral and in doing so, relives his years growing up with Madeline.

Somewhere along the way, I lost the point of the story being Madeline-and it became more about Mac and who he was. Madeline was mentioned occasionally, but mainly as a background character. With the title being about her, I thought the book would have centered more around her rehab, therapies and life after the accident.

Jane Hamilton has a gift in writing that makes it easy to read. While this story is a beautiful one, it was a bit confusing from chapter to chapter. I never knew what decade was being discussed. The story seemed to bounce all over the place with flashbacks that came without warning. It also seems very odd to me when a female writer writes from the male perspective and vice versa.

I think this book could have been better as a finished product if it would have had a little more organization to the story line. The story was there, it just needed some redirection.

Armchair Interview says: A story of extreme caretaking that most would or could never do.