Great Review, Fabulous Review

Remember how a while back I talked about "Getting a Review" -- about contacting the Amazon Top 50 and sending them a query. Well, it took a few months to hear back, but it was worth every minute.

***** stars
An immensely rewarding novel full of adventure and meaning,
August 12, 2007
By Daniel Jolley (Shelby, North Carolina USA)

Heather Shaw has written a quite remarkable - and certainly memorable - debut novel. Billed as "a story that gets kids and honors the epic worlds inside them," Smallfish Clover delivers all the adventure and meaning necessary to interest and fascinate older children and adults all at the same time. The fantasy games young Pace uses to entertain himself in otherwise boring surroundings are nothing compared to the life-and-death struggle he finds himself in after getting lost from his father inside a Peruvian market. Frightened and alone, unable to speak the native language, he waits in vain to be found and whisked away to the world he has always known. Then, as hope dims, he finds companionship and a measure of care among a group of street orphans overseen by Mabeareek, a man poor of means but rich of spirit (with a menagerie of animals seemingly a part of his very being) and a storyteller par excellence. While he can be inscrutable and one doesn't know exactly what to make of him early on, he is not a coercive influence upon the boys at all. If anything, he usually follows the boy's lead. In this new company of friends, Pace embarks on the adventure of a lifetime. What follows is a story full of tragedy as well as hope, one that quickly transforms Smallfish from an imaginative adolescent to a young man compelled to face maturity head on.

Pace, (whose English name is converted, somewhat comically, to Smallfish), picks up Spanish rather quickly, and almost from the start he is looked upon as an up-and-coming leader of the group (which makes for some potential friction with the older, de facto leader Zeus). He impresses the other kids with magic tricks and, drawing upon his martial arts classes back home, teaches the other boys the art of fighting. Soon, the troupe has given up panhandling in order to become entertainers of sorts, staging fights and profiting from their endeavors. Of course, success breeds danger from an older gang in that part of town, so Mabeareek eventually follows Smallfish's thinking and heads his troupe north, into the jungles and their more isolated villages on the way to the Amazon River itself. Relying on Mabeareek's story-telling prowess, the kids begin staging their own dramas, yet their successes barely manage to wipe away their tragedies. Their numbers shrink over time, for various reasons (some more tragic than others), until those that remain find themselves absorbed into a larger group of youngsters being trained, although they may not realize it at the time, to become terrorists. Forced to grow up far too fast, Smallfish must ultimately choose what kind of life he will lead, a decision that requires great bravery on his part.

The little street urchins who make up Smallfish's friends and companions are an interesting lot - especially Belem, the only girl in the group. She never speaks - not at first - until compelled to do so by an emergency. Initially, only Smallfish learns why she chose to remain mute for so long, but I would say that she goes on to serve as the real heart of the entire story. Any reader will be hard pressed to forget the likes of Toma, PayPay, Fatty, Pedro, Zeus, and Horse, though.

Eschewing a fairy tale ending, Heather Shaw paints a beautiful masterpiece of a story that leaves the reader feeling proud, sad, and somewhat confused - much like Smallfish and his friends feel much of the time. This is powerful, reality-based fiction - albeit of a reality few of us know, and one which no boy should ever have to face head-on the way Smallfish does. I did find the conclusion somewhat ambiguous, but this is one case in which the destination pales in importance to the journey itself. Pace's transformation into Smallfish is fascinating, albeit sometimes heartbreaking, to watch, especially in terms of the way he balances external and internal struggles on his accelerated path to early manhood.

Comments

[Lori]

Bravo!