Title: Far Far Away
Author: Tom McNeal
Publisher: Knopf
Rating: WORTHY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is shorter so as not to rob the writer of her story, but even so, it will probably still be more detailed than you'll typically find elsewhere!
ebook galley proof errata provided in case the author hasn't caught them yet!
P118 "...because he asked me not to tell you." has the word 'he' split between two lines!
P120 "...cinnamon gun" should be "...cinnamon gum..." (presumably!).
Here's a nice song of the same title which has nothing whatsoever to do with the novel, but which might get you in the mood to be transported far away even if only from the song!
This novel is amazing. I've never read anything by Tom McNeal before but he's definitely on my radar now. I'm going to buy this book and force my kids to read it on pain of merciless tickling if they don't. The story centers on two high-school kids, Jeremy Johnson Johnson and a girl who becomes an increasingly closer friend, Ginger Boultinghouse. The story is narrated by the ghost of Jacob Grimm. The writing is outstanding - perfect in tone, measure and content.
Jeremy lives with his father in a bookstore which his grandfather opened to sell nothing but the two volumes of his grandfather's autobiography! Jeremy's father married Zyla Johnson, but Zyla left them a while after Jeremy's birth. While this seems callous and mean on the face of it, to attentive readers of the story it will be obvious that she had no choice in her action. She had no choice because choice was subtracted from her (by The Finder of Occasions, perhaps - an evil presence who does nothing but stir up trouble, and appears to be occupying the form of a police officer?) Zyla isn’t the only one who went missing - lots of children are going missing, and disturbingly, the police don't seem particularly interested in doing anything about it.
Ginger one day talks Jeremy into going to the town's fabulous bakery where "Prince Cakes" are available. They're not available often, and Jeremy can't afford one even when they are, but Ginger tells him that they might get lucky, and indeed they do. The kindly baker, Mr Blix, produces coffee and cakes in return for an IOU. Ginger and Jeremy begin spending more time together, innocently growing closer until one evening, Ginger and her two girlfriends lure Jeremy out to conduct a mild prank on the baker.
The story offers insufficient motivation for me in this instance, for Jeremy to involve himself in something like this. It’s not in his character, but I'm willing to let that slide since it's the only bump in a very smooth tale. However, the consequences of this incident run deep. Jeremy loses a shoe and his house key on the baker's property, and he's rapidly picked up by the police; however, when Blix himself insists it was not Jeremy he saw on his property that night, he's released. Jeremy's reputation is nonetheless shot; everyone in town thinks him a potential thief! They know that he and his father are on the verge of being thrown out of their property into the street because of unpaid debts. Jeremy's father is incapable of earning a living, and all the odd jobs by which Jeremy was keeping them afloat quickly dry up. Now his family has no income, but things are about to turn around. Right around.
I highly recommend this story. This is how a YA romance should be written: not in the hammering, blundering, ham-fisted way of all-too-many stories, but in this natural, warm, and easy way which McNeal reveals, and in a story which is engaging from the start and told so well that you don’t want it to end. 212 pages is way too short for a story like this. I look forward to more tales of this nature and to this story becoming a movie.
The story intensifies as a friend of Ginger's "Conk" who is the son of the mayor, offers to help Jeremy with his foreclosure problem by involving his dad. Seeing an opportunity to own the entire block in which Jeremy's store is situated, the mayor offers an interest-free loan to Jeremy, which will pay off his debt. The loan will be due in six weeks, which gives him more breathing space by pushing out his deadline.
A slight problem here is that Jeremy is clearly not in any way old enough to sign a promissory note! But moving quickly along, Ginger Boultinghouse offers an out from even this new deadline by setting Jeremy up as a contestant on his favorite show, Uncommon Knowledge wherein guests are quizzed about what they claim is their expert topic - which can be pretty much anything. Jeremy signs up as an expert on the Brothers Grimm and their fairy tales; this should be a no-brainer given that he has one of the brothers advising him, but he has a weakness, which is that he's never seen any Disney movie based on those tales.
On the quiz, Jeremy does blazingly well, never putting a foot wrong, even on the $64,000 question, but he decides to try for one level higher: all or nothing on winning the jackpot. Unfortunately the last question involves what the huntsman returned to the queen in the Disney version, in place of Snow's intestines and liver (which is the request in the Grimm story), and Jeremy doesn’t know. In the sound-proofed booth, he hears a voice, not Jacob's, twice tell him to answer 'heart' but he ignores it, and consequently he loses all the money. This part didn’t work to well for me because Jeremy is already habituated to listening to, and trusting, the voice he hears from Jacob Grimm. Why would he suddenly go against all that and pick a lock of hair instead of repeating 'heart' which is what the voice advised him? I needed a bit more motivation there, but the story is so well done overall that I'm more than willing to let an occasional faux pas flow past!
And that's all the detail I'm going to offer for this story! Yes, I'm more cruel than Hansel & Gretel's witch! But I refuse to rob McNeal of any more of his amazing story by relating another single detail. To find out how this apparent disaster all plays out, you'll have to do what I now fully intend to do: buy the book, and then you read the story all the way through! You will not regret it if you're even mildly into stories of this nature. Even though at this point I haven't finished the entire story, I'm confident enough by now of McNeal's talent and skill to highly recommend this. Even if it goes downhill and ends in a miserable disaster, the first half of the book is so well done that it would still be worth the purchase just to read a half-a-story of this quality! I fully intend to get my hands on a hardback of this for my kids to read; it’s that good!
Just a quick post-script: I finished the novel and it did turn out to be excellent, so no issues there, although the villain turned out to be a wee bit obvious even to me! I loved the Ginger character immensely!
