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Patrick Ryan
Buckeye
Buckeye
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One town. Two families. A secret that changes everything.
'Poignant, powerful' Independent
'Omniscient, sweeping, almost defiantly sentimental' New York Times
'It's not just a great Midwestern novel, it's a great novel, period' Financial Times
SUSAN'S REVIEW
American writer Patrick Ryan’s debut novel Buckeye is a wonderfully immersive read. Set in the fictional Mid-west town of Bonhomie, Ohio, it creates a multigenerational saga about the intertwined lives of two married couples — Carl and Becky Jenkins, and Margaret and Felix Salt — and their respective sons Skip and Tom. Spanning decades from pre-World War One through to the late twentieth century, the narrative explores the interplay of the characters’ personal lives and the larger history of the nation, including World War Two, the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. Buckeye is a “big” story – literally running to 400 pages – with “big” stories about family secrets, infidelity and betrayal, set in the context of radical social change.
The plot of the characters’ personal lives certainly lends itself to melodrama, but like some of the more popular nineteenth-century novels such as Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, Ryan’s novel rises above the level of the potboiler by creating psychologically complex characters whose lives are, in this case, shadowed by the devastations of war. There’s Carl Jenkins’ father, Everett: reclusive and embittered, he suffers from PTSD after serving in WWI. His son Carl, whose physical disability makes him ineligible for military service in WWII, is a moving study in masculine vulnerability and shame. His wife Becky, who believes she can commune with the missing or the dead, becomes the subject of a local newspaper article entitled “Comfort in a Time of War.” Felix Salt, a closeted gay, feels conflicted, indeed anguished, about the need to repress his sexuality when serving in the war, while his wife Margaret suffers from his sexual confusion and emotional distance. Margaret is in several ways the driving force of the plot; and while her backstory might belong in a soapie — as a baby, she was left in a basket at the door of an orphanage — her hidden longings and regrets are convincingly, beautifully, rendered.
Buckeye shares other features with the traditional 19th-century novel. It uses an omniscient narrator, who assumes complete knowledge of the characters’ inner lives, instead of the multiple perspectives, influenced by ideas from modern psychology, of much contemporary fiction. And like those hefty Victorian novels, Buckeye combines expansiveness and miniaturisation, counterpointing its ambitious plot with a detailed evocation of moments in time to create a rattling good read. The novel also shows an appetite for sentiment; but unlike some notorious 19th-century examples, such as Harriet Beecher Stow’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop, Ryan’s novel never lapses into sentimentality. (After reading The Old Curiosity Shop, Oscar Wilde expressed his disdain for the manipulative use of emotion, most evident in Dickens’ treatment of the death of his main character, thus: “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.”) Ryan avoids the dangers of sentimentality by knowing the value of emotional restraint. One example among many is the scene in which Everett Jenkins is reluctantly persuaded to see his only grandson. Physically and emotionally “frozen” when Cal lays the baby in Everett’s arms, ‘tears disappeared into his beard. When he was finally able to speak, he said, “Look what you did.’” In a few unembellished words, the ambiguity of Everett’s words is telling: he’s both moved by the fact that his son has created a child, and by his son’s kindness in releasing him from emotional isolation.
What also makes Buckeye such a satisfying read it its refusal of bleakness or despair; there is, mercifully, the possibility of forgiveness. The darkness is leavened with wry humour, as in the list of questions asked by anxious customers when Becky attempts to ‘contact’ dead or missing loved ones:
Is he at peace?
Does she miss me?
Would he mind if I sold his rifles?
The contrast between two questions of profound longing and one of banal pragmatism makes for an amusing moment. But the final question can also be ready as a relinquishment of violence during a time of war; as a sign of the speaker’s straightened economic circumstances; and a continuing respect for the dead. This example, like the previous one about the baby, also show Ryan’s ability as a short story writer; his use of suggestion and conciseness allows readers the freedom to create complex meanings for themselves.
Above all, the novel is tenderly sympathetic to its characters, such that we come to care for them as though they were real people whose sufferings and strivings we share. Buckeye is a triumph of the empathetic imagination: rejecting the trend in contemporary fiction for irony and “cool,” this old-fashioned novel with a generous heart is one of my picks for the year.
Buckeye is now available in the Lane Bookshop. Highly recommended.
Susan
PUBLISHER REVIEW
May, 1945. As news of the Allied victory in Europe reaches the small town of Bonhomie, Ohio, a woman named Margaret Salt walks into a hardware store and asks the man behind the counter, Cal Jenkins, for a radio. What happens next will change both of their lives forever.
While the country reconstructs in the post-war boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie – and nothing can remain hidden in a small town. The consequences of that long-ago encounter will intertwine the fates of two families, rippling through the next generation and compelling them to re-examine who they thought they were and what the future might hold.
Full of compassion, humour and charm, Buckeye is a dazzling portrait of the human spirit by way of one unforgettable community; the twisted roads we take to achieve forgiveness and redemption; and above all a universal longing for love and connection.
'I've been yearning for a novel that connects the American generations who dealt with our two Wars – one of Omaha Beach, the other of the Ia Drang Valley. Buckeye is that book, and it soars' TOM HANKS
'Funny and tender ... Patrick Ryan has long been one of my favourite writers' ANN PATCHETT
'I love this novel with my entire heart … Wise and heartbreaking' ANN NAPOLITANO
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