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.
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