A review by spacenoirdetective
The Facts of Life by Graham Joyce
5.0
A glorious new classic in the genre of slightly ghost-tinged magical realism. A wonderful, large-personalitied family welcomes the newest babe in Frank, who is a typical young boy who just happens to have a mother who is slightly off, a wise grandmother, and a gaggle of uncles an aunts who all share in his raising at different points.
What impresses me about this book is the voices of each character coming through so clearly. I never felt that even one of the many characters that make up this family was indistinct, as is sometimes the case with similar books. This really is an "ensemble" piece of a novel with no real central character, though Cassie and her mother both share center stage. The Facts of Life refers to the realities we learn as children, and Frank learns his through so many different people, all of whom disagree with each other (usually in an amicable way). This is a novel that esteems the virtues of agreeing to disagree and the way it handles the subject of the afterlife is not to gloss over it with the too often cliched "quirky but well meaning" brand of character writing so common in this genre, but rather it's gentle and mature and most importantly just subtle enough to seem real.
There are a lot of scenes in The Facts of Life that feel like miniature time capsules, with dialogue and wartime and postwar reconstruction all fully realized, captured in the minds of people who often don't know what to make of progress. It's a perfect ode to families pulling together and not judging people like our protagonist Cassie, whose minds just tend to wander a little bit more than ordinary folk. It's not a total drama but it's not a full comedy but rather a lighthearted drama with poignant prose strewn throughout.
What impresses me about this book is the voices of each character coming through so clearly. I never felt that even one of the many characters that make up this family was indistinct, as is sometimes the case with similar books. This really is an "ensemble" piece of a novel with no real central character, though Cassie and her mother both share center stage. The Facts of Life refers to the realities we learn as children, and Frank learns his through so many different people, all of whom disagree with each other (usually in an amicable way). This is a novel that esteems the virtues of agreeing to disagree and the way it handles the subject of the afterlife is not to gloss over it with the too often cliched "quirky but well meaning" brand of character writing so common in this genre, but rather it's gentle and mature and most importantly just subtle enough to seem real.
There are a lot of scenes in The Facts of Life that feel like miniature time capsules, with dialogue and wartime and postwar reconstruction all fully realized, captured in the minds of people who often don't know what to make of progress. It's a perfect ode to families pulling together and not judging people like our protagonist Cassie, whose minds just tend to wander a little bit more than ordinary folk. It's not a total drama but it's not a full comedy but rather a lighthearted drama with poignant prose strewn throughout.