![]() A horde of babies swarms across the clapboards. Odd percussive sounds distort a shop’s Muzak. An unseen figure prowls around the house, trying all the windows. Images of drowning and being drowned haunt the mind. A shambling, snow-pale creature with “deranged” hair and a massive white dog or wolf encircle. Looming silences and unexplained sounds encroach. It is winter, and storms, snows, the icy sea and the neighboring pine woods isolate the Keenans from all but a few friends and places. This boy, Jack Peter Keenan, lives in a scattered village on the coast of Maine with parents, Tim and Holly, who are in varying degrees of ongoing concern, denial and anger. At the start of Keith Donohue’s new novel, an intelligent, perhaps slightly annoying 10-year-old boy at the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum retreats further and further from human contact into the compulsive, single-minded depiction, on page after page of notepaper, of monstrosities. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |