Frenchtown Summer by Robert Cormier & Dan Krovatin ISBN 9780440228547, 0440228549 instant download

Frenchtown Summer by Robert Cormier & Dan Krovatin ISBN 9780440228547, 0440228549 instant download

Eugene is remembering the summer of 1938 in Frenchtown, a time when he began to wonder “what I was doing here on the planet Earth.” Here in vibrant, exquisite detail are his lovely mother, his aunts and uncles, cousins and friends, and especially his beloved, enigmatic father. Here, too, is the world of a mill town: the boys swimming in a brook that is red or purple or green, depending on the dyes dumped that day by the comb shop; the visit of the ice man; and the boys’ trips to the cemetery or the forbidden railroad tracks. And here also is a darker world–the mystery of a girl murdered years before. Robert Cormier’s touching, funny, melancholy chronicle of a vanished world celebrates a son’s connection to his father and human relationships that are timeless.

From the Paperback edition.

Robert Cormier, much-lauded author of fiction for teens, pulls a switch on his readers with this memoir in blank verse, and proves to be an equally dazzling success as a poet. The story takes place in the streets, alleys, and tenements of the French-Canadian district of Monument called Frenchtown, familiar to Cormier fans from Fade, Heroes, and Tunes for Bears to Dance To. A bookish young boy, lonely in his big family, spends his thirteenth summer watching, learning, fearing, wondering--"in the days when I knew my name, but did not know who I was." He yearns for a sign of love from his enigmatic, silent father, and hides a terrible secret about his beloved uncle and the girl whose broken body was found in the woods long ago. This is vintage Cormier--he has distilled the most powerful themes and images of his previous books into one intensely beautiful and deceptively small work. Every poem is capable of standing alone, yet each additional chapter adds insights and events to carry the story forward. The voice is natural and easy, recognizable from his earlier novels but with heightened emotional impact. Poetry-loving teens will take this book to heart, along with other verse novels like Stop Pretending, by Sonya Sones; Foreign Exchange, by Mel Glenn; and Karen Hesse's Newbery Award-winning Out of the Dust. (Ages 10 and older) --Patty Campbell

More wistful but equally as haunting as Cormier's usual fare, this novel in verse shapes an impressionistic portrait of a lonely, keenly observant boy living in post-WWI Frenchtown (also the setting for the novel Fade). Twelve-year-old Eugene finds his father enigmatic and distant: "My father was a silhouette,/ as if obscured/ by a light shining behind him./ He was closer to me waving from the street/ than nearby in the tenement/ or walking beside me." While hoping for some sign of paternal love or approval, Eugene quietly and contemplatively penetrates the secrets of Frenchtown. He watches as Mrs. Cartin contemplates taking a leap from the third-floor, stands by as a one-time friend becomes an outcast after a bout with St. Vitus' dance and connects his favorite uncle to an unsolved murder case. Every observation implies mystery and hidden dramas; while the short verse chapters seem less plot-driven than Cormier fans may expect, they subtly convey the shadows in Frenchtown and the action those shadows conceal. Feeling "as transparent as rain," Eugene is a ghostly presence here, taking readers back in time and slowly mesmerizing them with his memories of coming of age. Ages 12-up. (Sept.)
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