22 June 2010
As Easy as Falling off the Face of the Earth (Book Review)
Filed under reading
As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth by Lynne Rae Perkins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Ry is on a train, rolling toward summer camp somewhere near Montana. His parents are on a boat, relaxing in the Caribbean. His grandfather is in Wisconsin, taking care of the house and dogs. They are all (Ry, parents, grandfather, and dogs) this far-flung at the beginning of As Easy as Falling off the Face of the Earth, but a combination of bad luck, bad decision-making, bad circumstances, and even bad geology flings them further and further apart as the novel progresses. In her first novel since the Newbery-winning Criss Cross, Lynne Rae Perkins creates a wonderfully absurd story that becomes more absurd with each page in prose that is inventive, engaging, and hilarious.
If you have read Criss Cross, you sort of know what to expect. The writing is very stream-of-consciousness in an adolescent way, but it is also extremely clever. There are times when Perkins audaciously breaks certain rules about good prose, but because she establishes early that this is the kind of story (and storytelling) where anything is likely to happen, she successfully pulls it off in ways not unlike her characters’ own daring stunts. The writer’s voice had me laughing aloud more frequently than even her own Criss Cross, as when Ry finds himself following orders aboard a small sailboat:
Ry was giddy at their unexpected luck. He understood that they were not done sailing, but tomorrow was another day. He would have kissed the boards of the pier if he weren’t so busy doing what Del was telling him to do. He haffed the chuffs, clipped the ridings, railed the boards, highed the lows, skibed the rampets, harbed the reefs, and cleeted the forths. Which is what sailing talk sounds like if you are not a sailor.
When they had made everything fast, which meant making sure nothing would go anywhere at all, fast or slow, Del said, “Here, grab your sweatshirt. It might cool down later.”
There is a section, a few pages later, that had me giggling (and I don’t giggle) when Perkins alters her narrator’s voice as Ry uses his high-school Spanish to communicate with an old lighthouse keeper. I would quote it here, but to remove it from context would be a disservice to anyone who might read the novel later.
I will agree with most reviewers who say this is not quite the novel Criss Cross is, but then I have read very few novels that are. This novel lacks the heart-breaking sympathy Perkins creates for her characters in the earlier book, but it cranks the whimsy up a few levels. Where Criss Cross is like a ride through the tunnel of love, As Easy as Falling off the Face of the Earth is more like a roller coaster ride, or like the wild, turbulent flight of a homemade airplane piloted by a crazy genius.
2010-06-22 :: me