Books like Too Far

My daughter came home for a college break with this novel, which she was given for free on campus. She passed it on to me, saying it was a “gorgeous read,” and that she had hoped to write a review but didn't have the time. Which is where Mom comes in …Just finished it, and, well -- like daughter like mother! What an entrancing book. It’s the kind that seems simple, like it’s written for children, but its simplicity is a deception; beneath the storybook facade is something deeper, wiser … the stuff of good literary fiction. It’s a quick read, too. I finished it in just two sittings. I’m wary of trying new authors, especially ones that haven’t been very well-reviewed, but regardless of some of the vitriol I’ve read online (honestly, where does that come from?), I would highly recommend this book.I hope I’m not giving anything away when I say that there’s an unexpected twist to the plot, which is otherwise a fairly simple one. It’s about two best friends who are six, a boy and a girl, who essentially fall in love, as only six-year-olds can. (Very nostalgic for me; my best childhood friend, who was of the opposite sex, and I were inseparable and considered ourselves “married”). The kids’ parents are either constantly fighting or taking drugs and behaving erratically, and the kids are often left to their own devices, Lord of the Flies-style. They create a fantasy world in the forest behind their homes, and that world is much richer than the lives of their parents. So much richer, in fact, that they’re tempted to leave the world of suffering that their parents represent and join their dream god and goddess in theirs, which promises an endless summer where they would be together, in love, forever. But that world comes at a cost. I’ll say no more …There’s a lot to admire here. The kids, though some will say they’re overly precocious for six-year-olds, are nicely fleshed out, and your heart will most definitely go out to them. Their fantasy world, born of their dreams – which are born, in turn, of their struggles at home – includes clever characters who often talk in verse. Some are imaginative idealizations of their parents -- who the kids really want their parents to be. Their perambulations through the forest (it’s set on the outskirts of Fairbanks, AK) are often spell-binding, for the kids and the reader. It’s heart-rending when they have to head back home again.There are also some problems: The natural descriptions are often beautiful, but Shapero sometimes doesn’t know when to stop. And sometimes the words he chooses to evoke the natural landscape are such big ones that they produce the opposite effect. My favorite English professor at Yale once told me that when writing anything, there’s no point using a $10 word when a 10-cent one will do (many years have elapsed since then, so you’ll need to adjust for inflation). This is especially true for Too Far, where the forest is seen and experienced through the eyes of six-year-old children. Words like “sphagnum,” “fritillaries,” and “cinquefoil” have no place in a book like this (except to show off the author’s knowledge of the local flora), and I wish the author had more consistently adopted the kids’ point of view in the telling of the story.Overall though, I was very moved by this book, taken with its ideas, and surprised by its ending. When I looked at the author's website, I noticed that he is a fan of William Blake. Funny, because as I was reading Too Far, this well-known Blake quote came to mind:"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern." Six-year-old kids, though they aren’t always well-scrubbed, have the cleanest doors of perception around, which is why Shapero’s protagonists are able to grasp, if only for a moment, the Infinite. I look forward to reading more by Rich Shapero. As I write, he has just one other book out, Wild Animus. I’ve put it on my list …