The Shadow Year

by Jeffrey Ford

On New York's Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy spends much of his free time in the basement of his family's modest home, where he and his brother, Jim, have created Botch Town, a detailed cardboard replica of their community, complete with figurines representing friends and neighbors. Their little sister, Mary, smokes cigarettes, speaks in other voices, inhabits alternate personas . . . and, unbeknownst to her siblings, moves around the inanimate clay residents.

There is a strangeness in the air as disappearances, deaths, spectral sightings, and the arrival of a sinister man in a long white car mark this unforgettable shadow year. But strangest of all is the inescapable fact that all these troubling occurrences directly cor-respond to the changes little Mary has made to the miniature town in their basement.

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Fiction, Mystery, Coming Of Age, Historical Fiction, Novels

289 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2008

About the author

Jeffrey Ford is an American writer in the Fantastic genre tradition, although his works have spanned genres including Fantasy, Science Fiction and Mystery. His work is characterized by a sweeping imaginative power, humor, literary allusion, and a fascination with tales told within tales. He is a graduate of the State University of New York at Binghamton, where he studied with the novelist John Gardner.

He lives in southern New Jersey and teaches writing and literature at Brookdale Community College in Monmouth County. He has also taught at the summer Clarion Workshop for science fiction and fantasy writers in Michigan. He has contributed stories, essays and interviews to various magazines and e-magazines including MSS, Puerto Del Sol, Northwest Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Argosy, Event Horizon, Infinity Plus, Black Gate and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

He published his first story, "The Casket", in Gardner's literary magazine MSS in 1981 and his first full-length novel, Vanitas, in 1988.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

a sweet and melancholy dreaminess gives this book a soft glow. the suburbs, parents trying to get by, ideal siblings - one strange, one protective. the unnamed middle child, our protagonist, is perfectly rendered. there is a murderer and there is magic, perhaps, and there is a ghost, most likely. and there is an unsentimental, nuanced realism - but a realism suffused with an almost offhand warmth. the prose is lovely. fleeting but important moments are captured with clarity. the author has a poetic way with words. he knows how to portray stillness and how to illustrate the ambiguity of a child's perspective. I love the world this book created.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the stars out of this book.

Sometimes it's the books I love most that are the hardest for me to review. Probably because the books I love most are hard to classify, a bit odd, a bit spooky, a little off somehow.

What can I say about this book? I love how it's written. I loved every single oddball character. From the first chapter I knew I had found something special. I didn't want to get too excited: what if it took a turn for the worst. It never did. Every page was great, and the ending was everything.

If you like Graham Joyce and Jonathan Carroll and Michael Bedard, this is something you should check out. It's of that ilk: something strange is going on, but what? In the meantime, life goes on...until.

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would be lying if I said this was really a YA novel, but for all normal purposes, it is written from the point of view of a kid in Elementary school and has all the generalized coming of age elements.

However, this is very much for the adults. Nostalgia, sure, harkening back to a small town NY in the early sixties, drawing from all grand features of what I'll call the genre of Epic Grownup Nostalgia with Horror. You've probably seen it around. In A Boy's Life, or SK's IT. Or Stranger Things.

There are a lot of imitators, but the writing in these have to be MAGICAL if it's going to catch my love. This one has a lot of that magic.

Oh, a lot of the mystery revolves around a prowler in the neighborhood and missing children and the strange movements in a town mockup downstairs and his kid sister's strange abilities, but that's all window dressing to some really fantastic outright writing.

I definitely recommend this for you nostalgia fans or younger folk who are curious about what life might have been like, once upon a time, when it was NORMAL to go out with your friends all day long in the neighborhood without supervision.

I know, right? That's some SICK FANTASY, right there!

[Ben Loory · Rating 4 out of 5]

from what i've read of jeffrey ford so far, it seems he bounces back and forth between two basic styles; the first is a dreamlike but intensely focused high fantasy, which could be about virtually ANY POSSIBLE OR IMPOSSIBLE WORLD OR WORLDS, and the second is a kind of incandescently fog-enshrouded semi-autobiographical mode more or less about his childhood growing up on long island... of course the reality of his childhood stories always seems to bleed over and end up about a hair's breadth away from some utterly unrecognizable possibly hellish otherworld... but in any case, this book seems to be about as "realistic" as ford gets... i don't like this mode quite as much as the other, but his writing's still wonderfully fluid and a joy to read; every chapter is a perfect, almost self-contained story, and the novel as a whole is mysterious and beautiful and very, very funny and frightening (like everything he writes, it seems)... it's just it comes off a little too much like to kill a mockingbird or the childhood parts of stephen king's it for my taste... it's just not as dazzlingly different as his other stuff... parts of it also remind me of loewinsohn's Magnetic Field... not that that's by any means a bad thing...

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Continued proof of my idea that Jeff Ford can write anything, and while I may have doubts when I read the bookflap, once I’ve read that first sentence I can’t stop turning pages until it’s done. The example this time is the coming of age/autobiographical tale not something I would seek out normally. Of course it’s Jeff Ford, so the painful bittersweet memories are mingled with gothic horror, surrealism, ambiguous mystery, and lingering sadness. He takes his excellent novella “Botch Town” and expands into a full length novel, which I don’t want to give away any detail of the plot as it’s too good, but it has laugh out loud humor, great characters, stories upon stories(like Dinesen storytelling is big Ford trope),a vision of evil(like Melville, McCarthy, and the Teshigahara/Kobo Abe movie “Pitfall” it’s represented by the color white), questioning of the underpinnings of reality (What are Mary’s powers? Botch Town? The notebook?), and what order is put on reality by our interpretation of it, and other mysteries. And the biggest question as when I’ve encountered Ford’s aubiographical stories before (which follow more of a Borgesian tradition on the style than a naturalistic one), is what is real and what is not?

[Alissa Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this novel. It had so many different components to it, and together they just worked. I loved that it was set in the 1960s, I loved all of the siblings (especially quirky, somewhat magical Mary) and how they took care of each other and worked together to solve the town mystery. With the nostalgia, the air of creepiness and the way the characters interacted it almost felt "Stranger Things"- like. If that show was set in the 60s, it would be this book.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've meant to read Jeffrey Ford for awhile now, and getting a chance at a free book I went with it. I have to say that I really enjoyed it, although it was quite flawed, the flaws themselves added a certain character to the book. The book is sort of a 1960's suburban novel, sort of like The Way the Crow Flies, and it almost feels like it could be set in the same neighborhood as Revolutionary Road , but unlike these two wonderful books, this one departs into a certain magical realism, told with the swirling inconsistency of a child's point of view. I have some problems with the book, but I'm not sure if they will be fixed between now and the release of the proper trade edition, even with some of the continuity problems that I thought the book suffered from, they add a charm to the book.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book about SIX years ago (geez...doesn't seem like it was that long ago)! Talk about original and...well, really, pure genius. This coming of age horror novel really does have it all, including a sense of humor. Now that I've mentioned it, I'm going to have to read it again. My review couldn't possibly do this book the justice it deserves. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Update: I listened to the audio edition in 2019. I think it was better to read the book vs. listen. There was nothing wrong with the audio edition, it is just that I enjoyed it more in print. I love this book. It's an old friend. Funny and suspenseful.

[Kristine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laugh-out-loud funny and creepy too!

3/12/15 - I just reread this book and loved it as much as the first time!

[Maicie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m old enough to remember when neighborhoods were safe enough for children to roam free. It was no big deal for me, along with my playmates, to disappear for hours and hours. A sharp change from today where, if a child is out of sight for more than a few minutes, a parent finds their heart lodged in their throat.

The Shadow Year revisits those days of innocence. The author uses a lot of his own childhood in the story (according to his website) which brings the tale to life. It is reminiscent of Boy's Life, one of my favorite books.

I will definitely read more of this author

[Tim Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

_The Shadow Year_ is a skillfully written book that is as much gripping childhood narrative as it is a horror/fantasy story and a wonderful dose of nostalgia. It succeeds at being all three things and I found it a gripping read all around.

The story centers on an unnamed narrator (if he was named I missed it), a boy in his final year of elementary school. His life centers around his older brother Jim, occasionally a bit of a torment to the narrator but most of the time a protector and friend he spends a lot of time with, his sister Mary (an interesting character, she has strange abilities with numbers and has more than one personality – the main alternate one is named Mickey, but also there is a Sally, Sandy, and Mrs. Harkmar – seen as playing by the adults but accepted rather matter-of-factly by the two brothers), his mother (who is most of the time in the grips of rather obvious alcoholism, occasionally coming out of the fog of wine to artistically paint or be more active with her children), his father (who works multiple jobs, generally coming home at midnight and only seen by the kids usually on the weekends, doing the best he can to be a good dad), and their grandparents Nan and Pop (who live in apartment that is part of their house). Though Jim is starting to get a few friends in school as he joins the wrestling team, for the most part the three siblings only have each other (well Mary has several imaginary friends). Most of the narrator’s interactions with his classmates are either to be fascinated by their weirdness or more often avoid them so he doesn’t get in fights.

The book is set in the early or mid-1960s (sometime after 1963 I gather) on Long Island, in a small town that the two brothers know well. They know their small town in the way that generations through the 1980s knew their home, by walking, bike riding, taking short cuts, playing in the woods, and looking for real or imagined treasures often miles from home. Apparently a very much ended era, the two boys (and occasionally Mary) would spend hours from home, their parents having no idea where they were, the boys seeking their own entertainments, their childhood geography a mixture of the real, the imagined, and the emphasis a young boy might place on a particular aspect of a place, with their real map perhaps marking paces such as a “kingdom of crickets” (“in the early fall, among the goldenrod stalks and dying weeds,” something most adults wouldn’t even notice or care about), a lake that the boys were told was bottomless (one they suspect is probably not, realizing that they were maybe being told that by concerned parents, but with more than enough childhood sense of wonder to imagine that it might really be bottomless), their pathways not just named streets but shortcuts through fields and forests that lead behind particular people’s house or to the school or local shops, some they could ride their bikes on, others that they had to walk or even climb.

And I did say real map, as Jim (with some help from the narrator) had constructed in the basement of their home something called Botch Town, a miniature cityscape made from toys and trash, with local houses, the school, roads, interesting areas of the woods, and individual neighbors represented. Quite accurate, the boys would show the activities of all the local neighbors, be they adult or kid, some of these activities recorded in notebooks.

What might have just been an interesting and well-written childhood narrative took some unusual turns. One, a prowler is apparently in the neighborhood, briefly glimpsed climbing ladders or peering into windows at night, all attempts to get a good look let alone catch the man ending in failure on the part of both the local police and the siblings’ neighbors. Two, the boys start to fear a mysterious man in white, one they come to call Mr. White, who drives around in a white car and they think is responsible for some local disappearances. Three, figures in the town start to move without either Jim or his brother having moved them, the person responsible they discover is Mary. Far from getting angry at their little sister, they fully accept her mysterious powers, especially when she is proven right again and again about where Mr. White or the prowler is, two mysteries that the two boys take upon themselves to solve.

The mysteries of Mary’s powers, Mr. White, and the prowler were quite interesting and conveyed in a fascinating way, almost in a form of magical realism; the boys simply accepted that say Mr. White had evil powers or that Mary had access to knowledge (or ways of processing it) that she shouldn’t reasonably have. At times I was left wondering was this the force of childhood imagination at work or was this something really supernatural? Or both?

The writing was evocative and descriptive, with some really well written passages. Here is a favorite, that shows a childhood appreciation of things that not all adults retain as well an outdoorsy child’s knowledge of the local neighborhood:

“The days sank deeper into autumn, rotten to their cores with twilight. The bright warmth of the sun only lasted about as long as we were in school, and then once we were home, an hour later, the world was briefly submerged in a rich honey glow, gilding everything from the barren branches of willows to the old wreck of a Pontiac parked alongside the Hortons’ garage. In minutes the tide turned, the sun suddenly a distant star, and in rolled a dim gray wave of neither here nor there that seemed to last a week each day.”

I will definitely seek more of this author to read in the future.

[Randee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am partial to well written stories told from a child's viewpoint. For instance, I enjoy Martha Grimes' 'Emma Graham' series (boo hoo...only 4 titles) more than her Richard Jury detective. I often think I could write a book if someone held a gun to my head, but I am pretty sure I wouldn't do a good job of writing a story where a child is the narrator. I'm not sure why. My father always called me the perpetual teenager (he didn't mean this a compliment) but I think there was way too much adult in me when I was a child. And probably too much child in me now as an adult. Some of us just can't get it right.

Anyhow, this charmer narrated by the middle son about a year in his family's life in small town Americana was top notch in my opinion. It's written so well. Two brothers and their younger sister are on to some strange doings around their town. It reminded me a great deal of 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'. I mean that as a compliment. Ray Bradbury is one of the true masters.

I am anxious to read more by this author. I loved this story and I have a feeling that whatever story he tells will be interesting.

[Fantasy boy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up The Shadow Year by Jeffery Ford because it seems similar to Boy's life. Then it turned out what I expected, the story was told by a boy's slice of life. Childhood, neighborhood, school, anecdotes etc. every things happened in the small town where the protagonists grow. One day, a limo appeared on the street that has some connections with later murders. The children played detective role in order to find out the true identity of the man with white garment. A murder mystery with nostalgia of 1960s mingles some supernature element(from children's perspective) . Back to the simplicity life of America, no computer games, Social media and video games so children experienced the town where was hidden plenty of secrets await children to explore. Enigma could be interpret to Ghost and devil with forbidden in the story. sometimes, young boys can percept vague things which are whimsical to adults.
I think The Shadow year does not concentrate on the method of solving murder but records events and engraves memories on childhood. In the story, a miniature sized town was a duplication of the present town and the memories always remain unchanged to children.

[Oscar · Rating 2 out of 5]

La trama se sitúa en Long Island, en los años 60, y el protagonista narra en primera persona lo que le sucedió cuando tenía unos 11 años. Este vive junto a su hermano mayor Jim y su hermana pequeña Mary, así como con su madre alcoholizada, y un padre que siempre está trabajando. Los abuelos viven en una especie de casa adosada.

Toda la historia transcurre entre los nostálgicos recuerdos del narrador, donde destaca la figura de un mirón que acosa a los vecinos, adjudicándose el papel de investigadores tanto él como sus hermanos.

‘El año sombrío’ (The Shadow Year, 2008), del escritor estadounidense Jeffrey Ford, ganó el Premio Mundial de Fantasía del año 2009, para mí de manera incomprensible, ya que el elemento fantástico es mínimo. Y terror tampoco hay, solo un poco de suspense. En fin, que no ha sido lo que me esperaba.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeffory Ford shows me yet again why he is my favorite author. This book stands as one of the most striking pieces of fiction I read last year. It's a coming-of-age novel and a statement on dysfunctional families that partially masks itself as a creepy mystery story. A creepy face in the window, a prowler in the neighborhood, murders, missing children, supernatural happenings, and laugh out loud moments. 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. Absolutely amazing. If you have not read any of his work, then by all means, get your ass to the bookstore!

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coming of age tales set in small-town suburbia - I’m a complete sucker for them. This novel reads like a combination of Bradbury and King. A delightful blend of childhood and the supernatural with some horror elements. I will be sure to check out more books by Jeffrey Ford in the near future.

[Ken B · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 STARS

[Nadia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed the way that Ford captured the transition from childhood to adolescence. There is a sense of mystery about the world that we lose as we become adults. At the end the line between fantasy and reality is blurred: the peeper who was so real to the adults turns out to be a ghost, and Mr. White is in fact a predator out to do harm (not just the scary guy who lives on the other side of town).

The children, meanwhile, accept their lives without question (the father they never see, their alcoholic mother). In that sense this book reminded me of Terry Gilliam's movie Tideland (albeit more grounded and much less absurd).

[Anthony Panegyres · Rating 5 out of 5]

A reflective memoir-style narrative with each chapter a vignette of its own evoking a vivid sense of place. The Shadow Year explores memories of childhood, as well as family and the neighborhood community all threaded together via surreal mystery - with mystery's accompanying shades of terror and suspense peppered throughout. Ford employs sharp, authentic dialogue and his prose is replete with sensory imagery.

This will take you back to your own childhood, but the genre elements and the gentle blurring of 'what is real' and 'what is not' along with Ford's writing make this a marvellous work.

[Mitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Der Wandler Verlag präsentiert uns hier einen in Amerika recht bekannten Schriftsteller, der in Deutschland allerdings kaum Beachtung findet. Dies ist sehr schade, weil er versteht sein Handwerk. Das Schattenjahr ist ein sehr gelungener Coming of Age Roman, gepaart mit etwas Krimi und mystischen Begebenheiten. Im Kern der Handlung steht das Leben eines Jungen in den sechziger Jahren einer amerikanischen Kleinstadt, mit all seinen Problemen und Sorgen. Die Leiche von Stephen King oder Boys Life. Die Suche nach einem Mörder von Robert McCammon kann man durchaus als Vergleich heranziehen. Mir hat das Buch viel Vergnügen bereitet.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this one despite its shortcomings. As a suspense novel, it wasn't very suspenseful. As a coming-of-age novel, it failed as well, as I didn't feel much connection to the main characters. On top of that, the ending was anticlimactic.

And yet for all of that I still liked the book - just not enough to recommend it to anyone else.

[Maddy Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book struck so many chords with me. It's such a relatable story of childhood adventures, the feeling of us-against-the-adults, and the bittersweetness of growing up, set around an other-worldly mystery. I couldn't put the book down, but didn't want it to end. Definitely a story that will stick with me for a while.

[lucky little cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Resonant yarn of smalltown life in the 60s is reminiscent of Stephen King's novella The Body in its mood and characters.

The unnamed kid narrator and his older (but not especially wiser) brother Jim crack wise as they prowl their neighborhood to foil a stalker, or a peeping tom, or maybe even one of each. Their family is stuffed with lovable oddballs--for example their mystically gifted, roll-up-smoking little sister Mary and their grandpa, a former boxer whose foo-dog back-tattoo's eyes glow red in times of danger. But such is Ford's talent that the tale is always substantial and ultimately a memorable snapshot of kid glory.

keywords: no one calls me Krapp;
of course that kid's named Ray; he's not just any old fart, he's a war hero; the desperate lives of elementary school teachers; that red sawdust stuff had "special properties [that] absorbed the sins of children"

Four on a YA ratings scale; three on a normal scale.

[Paul Patterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

'The Shadow Year' chronicles the lives of three children living in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic mother and an absentee father during the 1960's. Despite their difficulties the children are creative and imaginative. Together in their basement they invent a cardboard reconstruction of their hometown. Through a strange combination of mathematics and intuition, Mary, who may be borderline autistic or schizophrenic, directs the structure of the town with its clay characters who represent real-life people. Mary's two brothers discover an uncanny correspondence between the positioning of Mary's figures in her play construction and the precise geographical location of the townspeople as they go about their business. Much of the threesome's fun involves spying on the townsfolk using Mary’s vision map. As the game proceeds the children become more concentrated upon the board and how it manipulates itself without any aide from Mary. The children awake from their sleep with new revelations and clues about the town's underside, the mysteries that lie behind criminal events from simple peeking-tommery to murder.

The Shadow Year reads like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird or Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury, not only in the children's precociousness but also in its semi-poetic style. I was impressed by the wisdom of the children's observations about adult life and its inauthenticity -- read hypocrisies. These apparently disadvantaged children prove to be exceptionally patient with their mother's alcoholism and their father's absence. They develop an empathic understanding of why their parents are the way they are; even though they would like Mom and Dad to be significantly different they unconditionally accept them. They are considerably less generous with their teachers and other authority figures whom they see as fumbling dolts. The Shadow Year is undoubtably a 'bildungsroman', a growing up story, in whose center lies the transformation of a child into a young adult. The reader is shown what is jeopardized in this maturing process, the harmony with and loyalty to those we love. As the threesome mature they differentiate from one another but their memories of playing the game together renews their individual characters as they move forward.

The Shadow Year is no mere commentary on development. It also includes the introduction of spiritual and metaphysical themes. Subtle influences for both good and evil are rife in this story. It is refreshing to see that the children, who while by no means religously orthodox, express gratitude and reliance on that which is beyond their senses. They learn to maintain trust in the unknown, overriding their nascent skepticism.

The Shadow Year resurrects our own shadow years. This is especially the case for those, like myself, who grew up in the 60's. The children alive during the time of Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency. The sights and sounds of that time permeate the book, all the way from Bazooka bubblegum with its inserted waxy comics to candy floss that transmutes from the texture of cobwebs to the disagreeable taste of blobs of pure sugar. While reading The Shadow Year the unused part of my reader’s mind went back to my own childhood with its sights and sounds, friendships and adventures that I thought I'd entirely forgotten. I wholeheartedly recommend this book as a way to return to the deep down things that form our character before it was obscured through our frantic quest for individuality and success. Ultimately, it is a book about community and how weakness can be used not only for survival but also as a means of recovering nobility.

[Kat Hooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

The Shadow Year is a charming coming-of-age tale about the 6th grade year of an average American boy (we never learn his name) growing up in the 1960s. This year isn’t average, though, because there are some strange things going on in his small town. As he navigates his way around mundane matters such as an alcoholic manic depressive mother, a father who holds down three jobs, live-in grandparents, and unpleasant teachers, he’s also concerned with a prowler, a classmate who disappeared, and a strange suspicious man who drives an eerie white car. Things get really creepy when he realizes that the weird things happening around town seem to be linked to the way his possibly-autistic / possibly-savant little sister moves the cars and people around in his older brother’s replica of their town which he works on in their basement.

The Shadow Year feels more like mainstream fiction — it’s mostly about coming of age, family relationships, and living in a small town. Except for the wonder at Mary’s abilities, the supernatural elements are down-played and don’t become obvious until the end. The novel reminds me very much of A Christmas Story — that classic movie about Ralphie who wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas ("You'll shoot your eye out!"). Similarly, Jeffrey Ford fills his story with over-the-top characters who are fun to read about but who you’re glad you don’t live with and who you have a hard time believing could all co-exist in the same small town.

Also similarly, most of the plot revolves around the day to day events in a 6th grade boy’s life: waiting for the ice cream man, trying to complete school assignments with a minimal amount of effort, getting picked on by older kids, skipping church, sneaking out of the house, and trying to keep up with his brave and reckless older brother. These little slices of life are funny, poignant, and so beautifully and vividly described that they often brought a smile to my face and occasionally brought tears to my eyes. Here’s a passage about the ice cream man:

Occasionally Mel would try to be pleasant, but I think the paper canoe of a hat he wore every day soured him. He also wore a blue bow tie, a white shirt, and white pants. His face was long and crooked, and at times, when the orders came to fast and the kids didn’t have the right change, the bottom half of his face would slowly melt — a sundae abandoned at the curb…. In a voice that came straight from his freezer, he called my sister, Mary, and all the other girls “sweetheart.”

The Shadow Year is worth reading simply for Jeffrey Ford’s excellent imagery and atmosphere, powerful prose, and razor-sharp descriptions of life we can relate to, but it’s also a good mystery with plenty of tension and suspense. The relationship we observe between the boy and his older brother and little sister is truly touching. I have to add, also, that our ability to engage with a character whose name we never know is surprising and indicates Ford’s confidence and courage.

Despite its subject material, The Shadow Year is not a book for kids because of the language and sexual content. I listened to Audible Frontier’s production of The Shadow Year which was read by Kevin T. Collins who has an astonishing range of voices at his command. His excellent narration definitely added to my reading enjoyment and I’ll be looking for his name in the future.

I’m already on to my second Jeffrey Ford novel. He’s now on my list of must-be-read authors.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a story with children in it, but it is by no means a story for children. It is a short tale, told in relatively simple terms and from the viewpoint of a child, but it is by no means lightweight. The Shadow Year has been compared to Ray Bradbury's work, and rightly so, up to a point... but even at their darkest, Bradbury's fantasies seem to me altogether less weighty than Ford's.

The Shadow Year simply feels real to me - which makes sense; Ford states in his acknowledgements that he drew largely on his own childhood for this tale of the late 20th Century. A ceaseless accumulation of small details (many of which I remember from my own childhood) helps make it so. This particularity is one of the book's great strengths.

Concrete imagery abounds - Nan's butter-and-sugar sandwiches; old Christmas lights full of a colored liquid that bubbles when it gets hot; a movie about a giant praying mantis caught on a weekend TV matinee... these are all things I remember, too.

The spectres in Ford's book are also, by and large, real-life bogeymen with which I was, sadly, all too familiar: parental alcoholism and reduced circumstances at home; bullying by peers and arrogant, careless teachers at school.

All of these things make the few fantastic elements of The Shadow Year stand out in contrast as all the more significant. And even there, Ford's gift for particularity grounds the work. One of the most overtly fantastic elements of the book, the basement city of Botch Town with its strange connection to the protagonist's Long Island town, has something of its analogue in my own life: one of my young daughter's friends has a backyard town named Roxeboxen (spelling approximate), which has a detailed street layout, its own currency and laws... though as far as I know Roxeboxen's inhabitants don't ever seem to move around on their own!

I've seen this book described as "autobiographical fantasy," which is an apt description. The Shadow Year is a horror novel, a truncated bildungsroman, a work on the border between realism and fantasy... but most of all, it's a book worth reading.

[Bellezza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine meets Robert MacCammon's Boy's Life meets August Burrough's Running With Scissors in this novel by Jeffrey Ford: The Shadow Years.

I found it in the new section of our public library as it was published in March of 2008. The cover grabbed my attention right away, not only from the eerie sensation derived from the title written over dusk, but from the picture of the car's fins that evokes the era of my youth.

I'm not quite sure how a narrative from a boy's perspective can speak quite so clearly into the heart and mind of a girl like me: one who was most definitely not a tomboy. And yet, as I read, I found myself relating to every page because of the memories they evoked.

Do you remember the school's janitor who came to clean up vomit with the "red stuff" that looked like red rubber erasure scrapings? Do you remember the ads for Ajax cleaner as the White Tornado? Do you remember scaring yourself silly on a summer's night when reality and imagination became so intermingled that they were no longer distinguishable?

In Ford's novel, we find a boy just managing to pass fifth grade (his teacher's name? Mr. Krapp) at the school he's nicknamed The Retard Factory. School is the least of his concerns, as the town has discovered a recent prowler, a missing boy, and a mysteriously evil man the kids call Mr. White (because of the long white coat he wears and the long white car he drives). Helping them escape many narrow run-ins with this Mr. White, who seems to appear when no adult is ever present, is Ray Halloway. But, wasn't Ray killed shortly after he moved away with his family a few months ago?

We are transported into the mind of a boy, the terror of a child, the fantasies we conjure when we're faced with what we do not understand, through the narrative of the book. Not until the end do we find out who, or what is real, and even then there remains a certain amount of mystery.

It is the perfect autumnal read.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this creepy tale of a year in a boy's life in the 1960s. There's something really sort of dreamlike and surreal about it, with odd touches that sort of take away the book's anchor with real life. It reminded me a lot of my own childhood, which was spent making up stories and riding around on my bike with my brother (although, of course, we had much less free range than the boys in this book did).

There's a large cast of supporting, minor characters in this book, which really brings the flavor of the neighborhood the unnamed protagonist lives in to life. I liked the pervading creepiness better than the horror found in Stephen King's It, because all of the things that happened could easily be waved away as imagination. It actually does make you feel a lot like a little kid who knows something's wrong and nobody will do anything about it.

I liked it, but... at times the book is slow and the characters behave in almost mind-numbingly stupid ways - ways that seemed actually pretty out-of-character, and really brought down my enjoyment of the book.

I didn't think I'd read anything by this author before, but I see now he writes a lot of short stories and he's had stories in anthologies I've read, so I think I'll look further at his stuff.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

It turns out I had read the entire first half of the Shadow Year as the short story Botch Town. It was one of my favorite stories in the collection, and I have to say I enjoyed the expanded version even more. The first book it reminds me of is actually Bill Bryson's memoir: it's set in a different decade, but it has a similarly honest feel. It's fiction but it feels autobiographical. I can't recall if the narrator is ever named, so the effect is one of Ford as storyteller rather than writer. There's some mystery involved, and possibly some magic, but most of the magic of the book is in the narrator's pitch-perfect observations of his family and the people who populate his world.

On a mostly unrelated note, the jacket cover says that Ford "has been favorably compared to Kafka, Dante, and Caleb Carr," which I found very amusing for some reason. Does favorably compared mean that a comparison was made and he came out better? I usually see the phrase "has been compared to" in promotional material and assume that it was a favorable comparison. 'Cause ya know they wouldn't go around talking about the comparison if it were something bad.

[Jeremiah Genest · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is above all a book about setting, which has always played a central role in Ford's work, and the yellowed glimpse of Long Island obtained from this novel is amazing-- the streets, the trees, the frozen lakes all bear the imprimatur of reality. That's what keeps you turning pages even when Ford shifts into conventional (as in convenient) horror toward the end of the novel and drama gives way to exposition. It sets up a nice twist, but because we know a retrospective narrator will survive, the author must make us fear for those unable to tell their story -- the dead, the missing, the never-to-be-found.