monoceros blogsI meant to write about this little-known young adult’s novel earlier this year but as it is with most things, life got in the way and the idea slipped to the back-burner. But something reminded me about the novel recently and I decided to write about it before the year was up.
Although it’s classified as a young adult book, the novel has many themes that appeal to grown-ups and Gruber develops these so well that I was all but crying by the end. Actually, I was in that state for a good number of sections of the book. Michael Gruber deals unflinchingly with the psychological pain the protagonist endures as he grows and learns about the world around him. Without much heavy-handedness, he also highlights the literal and metaphorical masks with which the boy hides his physical and emotional selves. How sad and true to life it is, I kept thinking.
The characters are complex and incredibly well developed. A working mother (in this case, it is a witch-like woman who isn't quite a witch; I know this sounds contradictory, but it makes perfect sense in the novel) who tries to have it all and fails; a skeptical and clever cat; a simple-minded but nurturing bear with a deep abiding love for her charge; a self-absorbed and uncommunicative boy who has to grapple with the sudden knowledge that he is ugly, who yearns for and also tries to escape his mother's love, who almost grasps how much she has sacrificed for him but still breaks her heart through and through. I was stunned by the conflicting desires that rippled through the characters; they were tack-sharp of the ones that many of us endure and embrace all through our lives.
And did I mention that the book also makes clever riffs on well-known fairy-tales and fables like Bluebeard, Cinderella, and Rumpelstiltskin? I've read other novels by Gruber, but this one is my favorite.
"Lump looked at his mother’s face, and his vision began to blur with tears. This was the moment when he should have fallen on his knees and cried that he was sorry, that he knew that his pride and disobedience had brought them all to this ruin and that he loved her and was grateful for her immense sacrifice. If he had done that, they might have talked seriously about what lay between them for the first time in their lives, and something new and better might have come out of it. But such sacrifices are often unbearable for the young to contemplate, and so it was with Lump. He suppressed his tears; his eyes cleared, but the unshed tears fell inward, as such tears always do, and turned to ice and froze his heart."
~ from The Witch’s Boy, by Michael Gruber
Posted by Monoceros at November 2, 2009 6:48 PM