The Year of the Storm by John Mantooth
My rating: 4/5 cats
i can’t help but feel a little tiny bubble of apprehension when short story writers make the big move to the novel, because i worry that they won’t be able to sustain the narrative long-form.
but once i saw that Frank Bill, of all people, was comparing this to Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, of all books… i should have known this would be pretty solid.
and it is definitely solid.
i’m not really sure how to classify it. i guess it is “slipstream,” even though that is itself a slippery genre, and it depends on how you interpret the contents of this book, which blurs the line between reality, delusion, magic, and coping mechanisms.
this definitely has shades of the body in it, which frank bill also cites as a point of comparison. not in its subject matter, but in the really tender way the main character is drawn. and ordinarily, that is a word that would cause me to run far away from a book because, ew, but in this case, i think it is appropriate. it is a coming-of-age novel set in a claustrophobic smalltown alabama setting, with all of the gossip and homophobia and family-reputation-baggage inherent in these kinds of places, but with this real jewel of a main character in danny.
when danny is fourteen his mother and four-year-old autistic sister go missing in a monstrous storm. everyone believes them to be dead, or to have run away, but danny believes something else, especially after he meets a mysterious man who claims he can show danny where they are.
which comes across slightly less creepy in the book.
this novel is written when danny is thirty years old, a vietnam vet looking back on that time in his life when the world was full of awful things, but also the possibility of magic.
the rest of the story is told from the POV of the old, one-eyed man with emphysema and a shady past who tries to reunite danny with his family.
and can i just take a minute here to once again squirm at eye-injuries in fiction?? SQUIRM!! this one was also particularly good. but… so shuddery.
this is one of those books that is just a good story. which seems like faint praise, but there are novelists and there are storytellers, and sometimes they are the same thing, but not always, and i really appreciate people who can just tell a good story.
mantooth is an excellent storyteller. the atmosphere has that “right-there” quality, especially the tornado scene, the characters seem genuine, there is a perfect blend of closure and ambiguity, it’s just all around great stuff.
plus: QUICKSAND!
there are a couple of things i would have maybe wanted more of, but i think that is also the sign of a good storyteller – it isn’t always about having all questions answered and wrapped up in a bow as much as the keeping a little bit of the story with you, as you wonder about what happens after, or what happened during the little lapses. we never have all our questions answered in life, so i kind of like the little gaps in my fiction.
and there aren’t many; i never felt unsatisfied as a reader. just…a little yearning. and i like the yearn.
definitely worth checking out for anyone looking for a literary mystery novel with a twist.
and the fact that i would like to read this one again says a bit, i think.
so you should read it once, at least.
at least.
