Perfect
A Novel
Book - 2013
Random House, Inc.
From the author of the international bestseller, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, comes another exquisite and emotionally resonant novel about the search for the truth and unconditional love.
On a foggy spring morning in 1972, twelve-year-old Byron Hemming and his mother are driving to school in the English countryside. On the way, in a life-changing two seconds, an accident occurs. Or does it? Byron is sure it happened, but his mother, sitting right next to him in the car, has no reaction to it. Over the course of the days and weeks that follow, Byron embarks on a journey to discover what really happened--or didn't--that fateful morning when everything changed. It is a journey that will take him--a loveable and cloistered twelve-year-old boy with a loveable and cloistered twelve-year-old boy's perspective on life--into the murkier, more difficult realities of the adult world, where people lie, fathers and mothers fight without words, and even unwilling boys must become men. Byron will have to reconcile the dueling realities of that summer, a testament to the perseverance of the human spirit and the power of compassion.
From the author of the international bestseller, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, comes another exquisite and emotionally resonant novel about the search for the truth and unconditional love.
On a foggy spring morning in 1972, twelve-year-old Byron Hemming and his mother are driving to school in the English countryside. On the way, in a life-changing two seconds, an accident occurs. Or does it? Byron is sure it happened, but his mother, sitting right next to him in the car, has no reaction to it. Over the course of the days and weeks that follow, Byron embarks on a journey to discover what really happened--or didn't--that fateful morning when everything changed. It is a journey that will take him--a loveable and cloistered twelve-year-old boy with a loveable and cloistered twelve-year-old boy's perspective on life--into the murkier, more difficult realities of the adult world, where people lie, fathers and mothers fight without words, and even unwilling boys must become men. Byron will have to reconcile the dueling realities of that summer, a testament to the perseverance of the human spirit and the power of compassion.
- Details
- Full Record
- Additional Info
Searching for more content…
Searching for more content…
Publisher:
Toronto : Doubleday Canada, c2013
ISBN:
9780385677721
Branch Call Number:
FIC JOY
Characteristics:
385 p. ;,22 cm.
Opinion
From the critics
Community Activity
Comment
Add a CommentA small book that moves expertly through disorder, mental illness and the crushing, terrible restrictions that we put on ourselves with class and socioeconomic limitations. A child who is terribly appalled with the disorder in the universe at the idea of adding seconds to a day, which will thus alter the time of everything is faced with the disintegration of his own personal world with the events of a few seconds. The despair of the integration of tragedy, deception, domestic emotional abuse and the stagnation of female solidarity is at the root of this powerful novel.
Not sure if it is fair to make a comment, when the book was just too painful to read all the way through. One said life after another, and another, and another. Very depressing read. Not hopeful. Just a glimmer at the end -- but a glimmer that comes too late.
The premise makes this sound much more interesting and weird, but ultimately I was disappointed by how ordinary everything is.
A very disturbing read for me. U was so depressed by the end of the book don't think i can face another read by this author. However the treatment of people suffering complex grief, especially adolescents, was probably true for that period in mental health interventions.
100 pages in. LovIng this. Not a happy little read, but illyminating and sympathetic portrayal of mental illness, feminism etc
The book is written with a wonderful language, talented.
Chapters of the book in which the events take place in the present, I found quite tedious.
It may sound blasphemous, but it is absolutely not my
intention, but in general, the plot of the book - it kind of "too much of nothing".
Off course, I mean - "Nothing" in this case - is a loose concept.
I loved this story. I thought it was an excellently written novel. I am eager to read Joyce's Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.
This book is difficult to rate because I think it is a good book club selection but not one I would recommend to a friend to read. It lends itself well for discussion with themes of mental illness, fate, and the ambiguity of some of the story line. It is a well written book with lots of layers in the story but the overall feel of the book is a bit depressing.
I borrowed this, having enjoyed Joyce's Unlikely Pilgrimage (which I found lovely). However, anyone even a bit susceptible to anxiety may find this read unbearable. What seemed a relentlessly growing thread of hallucinations and misunderstandings had me wanting to return the book asap. I stuck it out to see how it ended, and was left with a sense of grim pointlessness. Perhaps that was the point?
I found this a sad little book overall, and think I enjoyed her Harold Fry story more - still worth reading, though.