The Shadow Year

Author: Jeffrey Ford
Rating: 8 (Trinalor's Scale)	Reviewer: Trinalor
Genre: Mystery	Publisher:William Morrow
Pages: 289	Orig Pub Date: 2008
Binding: Hardcover	Cover Illus.: Dan Burn-Forti/Getty Images

FBS Quick Take
The characters have that feeling of authenticity that makes them instantly recognizable, and the story has that feeling of nostalgia without any of the sugary sentimentality.

Almost two years ago when I reviewed Ford’s collection The Empire of Ice Cream for FantasyBookSpot, I noted that Botch Town was my favorite of the bunch. It was something of a mystery story meshed with a coming of age story that had a feel of the “fantastic” about it.

So when I began reading The Shadow Year which is based on that novella, it was evident I was reading a very familiar story, but I didn’t mind because I had enjoyed the original so much. But The Shadow Year isn’t just a re-telling of Botch Town. Ford expands on his original story, makes some major changes to it, adds a significant character, and then continues on to a much more resolute ending.

At the same time that little Charlie has disappeared, a Peeping Tom has been making the rounds in this neighborhood and a stranger trawls the streets in an old white car. All of these occurrences seem likely to be related, and Jim recruits his brother and sister as well as George, the family dog, to gather clues and investigate.

The focus of The Shadow Year is as much on these mysteries as it is on family, and that is where Ford expands on the original story the most. Dad works three jobs and is seldom seen by the kids, Mom is an artist and an alcoholic, Nan and Pop are the grandparents who live in the converted garage, and George, the aforementioned family dog, is protector and scent marker. The youngest child, Mary, is either “really smart or really simple”, Jim is the oldest and in the seventh grade and does a good job of bossing and generally harassing the other kids. The book’s narrator is the middle child, a self-described weakling, but who is never actually named in the entire book (or the original story.)

Ford’s portrayal of this family and its dynamics evokes feelings of compassion and even understanding as he describes here a scene in which you get the feeling this has happened all too often before and will be repeated all too soon:

When George and I got home, the wine bottle sat on the kitchen counter, empty, and my mother was passed out on the couch. There was a cigarette between her fingers with an ash almost as long as the cigarette. Jim went over and got an ashtray that was half a giant clamshell we had found on the beach the previous summer, and Mary and I watched as he positioned it under the ash. He gave my mother’s wrist the slightest tap, and the gray tube dropped perfectly whole in the shell.

I wedged a pillow under her head as Jim took her by the shoulders and settled her more comfortably on the couch. Mary fetched the Sherlock Holmes. Jim opened it to The Hound of the Baskervilles, the story that obsessed her, and gently placed the volume binding up, its wings open like those of a giant moth, on her chest.

There is a lot going on in The Shadow Year, and Ford moves the story effortlessly through such accounts of family life to the disquieting effects of the prowler’s appearances in folks’ backyards and a stranger in a white car (also the prowler?) whose presence is somehow sinister and alarming.

But things are kept in balance with humor as we see the grandmother through the eyes of the young unnamed narrator:

Nan had gray wire-hair like George’s, big bifocals, and a brown mole on her temple that looked like a squashed raisin. Her small stature, dark and wrinkled complexion, and the silken black strands at the corners of her upper lip made her seem to me at times like some ancient monkey king. When she’d fart while standing, she’d kick her left leg up in the back and say “Shoot him in the pants. The coat and vest are mine.”

And as when Jim gives Mary some Halloween advice:

“You don’t eat anything that’s not wrapped, except for Mr. Barzita’s figs. Some people drop an apple in your bag. You can’t eat it, but you can throw it at someone, so that’s okay. Once in a while, someone will bake stuff to give out. Don’t eat it--you don’t know what they put in it. It could be the best-looking cupcake you ever saw, with chocolate icing and a candy corn on top, but who knows, they might have crapped in the batter. I’ve seen where people will throw a penny in your sack. Hey, a penny’s a penny.”

By the end of The Shadow Year, the mysteries are solved, and if there is any flaw to be found in this book, that may be the one: the neatness of its conclusion. Nonetheless, Jeffrey Ford has written a captivating novel of a year in the life of a young boy. The characters have that feeling of authenticity that makes them instantly recognizable, and the story has that feeling of nostalgia without any of the sugary sentimentality.

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