The Bright Forever: A Novel
by Lee Martin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Lee MartinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-04-04
ISBN: 0307209865
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Book Reviews of The Bright Forever: A Novel
Book Review: Martin evokes Sherwood Anderson in somber, unsettling account of a small town dealing with tragedy
Summary: 5 Stars
In the hands of talented authors like Lee Martin, small-town America still has much to teach us about our national character. His "The Bright Forever" is a suspenseful chronicling of the consequences of a small child's abduction on a seemingly tranquil and imperturbable community. The disappearance, however, reveals fissures in families, tensions between classes, and fragility within personalities. Martin's novel treats social isolation, existential loneliness, voyeurism and spiritual hunger with astonishing clarity. "The Bright Forever" evokes Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" in its focus on broken people whose distorted and tormented inner lives contrast sharply with their seeming social invisibility. Anderson described these bitterly unhappy people as "grotesques," and Martin has created a series of characters broken by life, humbled by circumstances yet burning with unsatisfied desires.
Presented in a series of explanations told by various characters in their own voice, "The Bright Forever" focuses on the deepest mysteries of the human heart: what causes people to harm others; when is it proper to exact personal vengeance; how well do we know ourselves. These unanswerable questions persist throughout the novel, and Martin's exquisite ability to draw us into the inner-lives of perpetrators, bystanders and victims gives a true power to his writing.
On its surface, "The Bright Forever" is a murder-mystery. A beautiful little girl, on the way to the library to return overdue books, disappears. The fact that she is the daughter of the town's wealthiest man means that the entire town feels her loss and wants the perpetrator caught and punished. The strength of the novel, however, goes far beyond its narrative; its tormented characters give it resonance, power and significance.
The principal narrator of the novel, Henry Dees, comes to symbolize the town's "grotesques." A rail-thin, reclusive teacher, Dees knows himself as a glutton and a vicarious feeder on others' dreams; his repressed hunger for life leads to understandable isolation and shame. He recognizes that "he could never have the substance or worth" others in his community have. From childhood, "he was learning to love by leaving people alone." Ironically, an unplanned relationship with a down-and-outer draws him out of his reclusive shell and involves him in not only the crime, but its necessary resolution.
The man he befriends, Raymond R. Wright, has been broken by life as well. Wright's most vivid childhood memory is of being forced to sit under a leaking pipe outside of his elementary school cafeteria where he was forced to eat lunch while suffering the indignity of listening to the happy noises of well-fed children next door. As Dees has hungered for acceptance, connection and place, Wright's needs are far more complex. His romantic involvement with the recently-widowed Claire Mains scandalizes the poorer side of town in which the two live.
Claire is equally damaged. She's the type of woman, who, like Ray, has taken "wrong turns, hit dead ends...and has never made [her] way back." Her shrunken, nearly concave chest is a wrenching symbol of her blighted life. When Raymond is accused of the heinous crime of kidnapping (and worse), Claire can only numbly go through the routines of loss and remorse.
The issues of separateness, repressed guilt and anger know no class boundaries. The victim's family figuratively owns the town; Mackey wealth and influence dictate the tone of the small Indiana town in which events unfold. The patriarch, Junior Mackey, is awash in conflicted emotion. His hard-earned control ruined, he discovers influence cannot restore something lost. His wife, burning with a hidden shame for an act done decades earlier, discovers untapped strength. The pampered but disappointing son, Gilley, has to face the fact that life will pose far greater challenges than perfecting chip shots on a perfectly manicured back yard.
Each of Lee Martin's answers to the frightening questions asked in "The Bright Forever" elicits doubt and engenders more questions. As the author delves more deeply into the inner lives of his characters, the greater mysteries consume our attention. These mysteries, delving into the deepest truths of the human condition, distinguish this very important and elegantly written novel.
Summary of The Bright Forever: A Novel
On an evening like any other, nine-year-old Katie Mackey, daughter of the most affluent family in a small town on the plains of Indiana, sets out on her bicycle to return some library books.This simple act is at the heart of The Bright Forever, a suspenseful, deeply affecting novel about the choices people make that change their lives forever. Keeping fact, speculation, and contradiction playing off one another as the details unfold, author Lee Martin creates a fast-paced story that is as gripping as it is richly human. His beautiful, clear-eyed prose builds to an extremely nuanced portrayal of the complicated give and take among people struggling to maintain their humanity in the shadow of a loss.
Reminiscent of books such as The Little Friend and The Lovely Bones, but most memorable for its own perceptions and power, The Bright Forever is a compelling and emotional tale about the human need to know even the hardest truth.
A Featured Alternate of the Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, and Book-of-the-Month Club
Also available as a Books on Tape AudioBook and an eBook
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