In some ways Brockmeier is a bit of an enigma to me. He's writing about a topic numerous other authors have written about, the disappearance of a child but the way he writes it seems so real and engaging without any sort of pretense or phony tear jerking scenes and yet one can't help but feel so drawn in to the characters and the story, to their alternate versions of history. Some of it is more fantastical in terms of its ideas and others of it are grand hallucinations the reader believes are truly happening just as the protagonist is. Borckmeier is honest and touching in his ability to write this kind of story, a delicate wonder that could easily become a stale cliché. When it seemed all words and worlds had already been explored, Brockmeier managed to transcend the limitations of already used language and make it all seem so real again.Favorite Quotes:pg 11 "She likes the way the joke makes a perfect ring, wrapping around on itself again and again, like a pinwheel or a revolving door, but not everyone thinks it's funny."pg. 45 "NOTHING MAKES GOD LAUGH LIKE WHEN WE TELL HIM OUR PLANS FOR THE FUTURE"pg. 91 "The school projector always sounded like a bicycle with a playing card pinned between the spokes, rattling softly then loudly and then softly again, and it gave the movies they watched in the classroom a stuttering sort of rhythm, a cadence of music that lay just beneath the action and came to seem inseparable from it."pg. 106 "Janet felt an unexpected lightness inside her. There was no behavior so outlandish that it wasn't a believable human response to the world."pg. 136 "Frank Lentini, Magician," and he headed for the front door. Just before he left, Micah took his sleeve and asked him a question: 'You're not me coming back from the future to tell me about my life, are you."..."No, son," he finally said. "No, I wish I was. Some tricks even a magician can't perform."pg. 194 "...as if the words were crawling up from underneath his tongue."pg. 207 "Sometimes he thinks that the world as we know it is as thin as a tissue of cloud-that we can pierce through it without even trying, stepping sideways out of ourselves, and end up in some other world altogether, or in no worked at all. Sometimes he thinks that the shout he heard that afternoon was the sound Celia made as the tissue closed behind her.
Kevin Brockmeier is one of the authors concerning whom I have made it my duty to read every possible published work. With this one complete, I only have one to go, and like everything else he's written, The Truth About Celia is incredible.Concerning, as a brief glance at the back cover would reveal, the disappearance of the title character when she was seven, the book chronicles the lives of her parents in the aftermath. Brockmeier utilizes an author-construct in the form of Celia's bereaved father to "write" the novel, which consists of his recordings of what might have happened to Celia, and what has happened to him and his wife. In doing so, Brokemeier is a quintessential possibilitist, if that is a word, working on the edges of things, ever providing tangible answers. This works both structurally and thematically: if someone's daughter went missing and never returned, all they would have would be imaginings of what could have happened to her. Further, Brockmeier uses, primarily, declaratives to get his points across. Instead of examining specific thoughts of the characters in detail, he describes their actions, what they see and do in their shattered lives, to convey the extent of their grief. Highly recommended.
What do You think about The Truth About Celia (2004)?
I picked the worst time to read this book, a book that I had no idea what the content was. I was departing to NYC for a business trip, leaving my two daughters and wife, reading a book about a seven-year-old disappearing form her yard without a trace. Joy!My only exposure to Brockmeier was a single, magical short story, and this novel has a definite short story vibe. At least two of the chapters are basically short stories within the book, and the rest of the chapters are fairly self-contained.In any case, a lot of it was quite well done, though I didn't read it as deliberately as I would a short story. So I'm sure I missed a lot of beauty in the details.
—Barry
Parents linger over the disappearance of their daughter.***SPOILERS AHOY!*******Don't go looking for any resolution in this book. Just like in his novel A Brief History of the Dead (which I loved), Kevin Brockmeier delights in exploring the vortexes left in the world by people who've passed away. Truth About Celia seemed scattered to me until I remembered that the main character's profession was author. The scattered chapters are insights into the father's grief. The stories give the reader insight into his mental state as the plot moves farther away from the day of Celia's disappearance. Quiet, brooding, and beautifully written. Only three stars for me because I couldn't get over the wall the narrators put up. I'm sure it was on purpose that the father and mother are guarded. But reading-wise, for me, they seemed about as present in the novel as Celia.
—N W James
Beautifully painful, this book is about a 7-year-old girl going missing and, rather than the search for her, the impact of her disappearance on her parents, especially her father, and the small town they live in. Not a novel, it's an emotionally connected collection of short stories (one of which doesn't quite seem to fit) - ostensibly written by the guilt-ridden, fiction-writer father - that becomes a lyrical evocation of endless loss: the shattered father, alone in a house he can't leave, accepting weekly a meat loaf with an egg inside that a neighbor lady leaves on his doorstep. It's sad, yeah, but lovely, and although not the tour de force that Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead was, it's less sentimental than even that largely unsentimental novel, and it's delicate and strong.
—Julian
