This gets my vote for "sleeper of the year" just past. It seems to have grown to a lovable best seller month by month over time.
An old man named Theo (no last name provided) turns up in a bucolic,
picture-perfect southern river town named Golden. He goes to a local coffee shop
called “The Chalice.” Think about that for starters. On the walls of the shop
are pencil portraits of customers drawn by a local artist and a notice that
they are for sale. Since sales of the pictures seem moribund, Theo decides to
buy the pictures one at a time, search out the sitters, and then arrange a
meeting with them on a bench by a fountain in a local park, where he gives them
the portrait and chats with them about their lives. It is a clever structural gambit
that gives the entire novel a beautiful narrative push. Right from the
beginning, the past becomes something that the main character is artfully
hiding.
Theo last lived in New York City and the fountain in the
book reminds him of the Bethesda Fountain in New York’s Central Park. It had
particular resonance for me because it reminded me of the symbolic importance of
cleansing waters in a major play of the 1990’s titled Angels in America.
Both feature an angel with spreading wings looking over those seated or walking
by. Take note—What do angels do?
The giving of the gift of each portrait becomes a blessing,
a small act of kindness with no strings attached that begins to reveal the life
and inner soul of each recipient. They
are a varied lot. Among them are Mr. Whitaker, the custodian with a crippled
daughter, Basil the street musician, Simone the cello student, and most moving of
all, a woman on the spectrum who sleeps under bridges or at the local mission and
carries all her possessions with her on an old bicycle.
Some of the sitter’s stories are happy, some lightly touched
with humor, some full of yearning, and some carry a full measure of sorrow and
pain. Each little bio adds to the texture of the town of Golden. And each new
revelation from one of the town’s residents brings with it a reminder of Theo’s
mysterious concealment of his own history. It is literally what keeps you
reading. Why did this man begin this unusual project, and what was he hiding
from those he befriended as well as from the reader? What was the cross Theo was carrying?
Theo loves the natural world and especially birds. At one point,
he describes a sunset that reveals a cloud of thousands of starlings and red
wings each flying “with synchronized precision, a dancing funnel, undulating in
perfect union.” This spectacle he
recalls has a name. It is called a “murmuration.” The same word was used just
last week in David Brooks’ NYT essay on the strange way the brain works. This
swirling image of the complicated yet unifying nature of life was a new word
for me and it neatly encapsulates the whole book right up to its shocking and
violent conclusion. It leaves a reminder
to Theo that beauty and goodness can exist right alongside his own and others’ grief.
A carried cross can be lightened by the long view that the town of Golden, in
spite of the presence of evil, can still have a “prevailing goodness.”
A definite 5 and I don’t give “A’s” out lightly.
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