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The Rope Walkby Carrie Brown
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:The Rope Walk brings us the dazzling story of a pivotal summer in the life of Alice, a redheaded tomboy and motherless girl who is beloved and protected by her five older brothers and her widower father, a professor of Shakespeare. On Memorial Day, at her tenth birthday party in the garden of her Vermont village home, Alice meets two people unlike any she's known before. Theo is a mixed-race New York City kid visiting his white grandparents for the summer. Kenneth is a cosmopolitan artist with AIDS who has come home to convalesce with his middle-aged sister. Alice and Theo form an instant bond and, almost as quickly, find themselves drawn into the orbit of the magisterial Kenneth. When the children begin a daily routine of reading aloud to the artist, who is losing his eyesight, they discover the journals of Lewis and Clark and decide to embark on their own wilderness adventure: they plan and secretly build a "rope walk" through the woods for Kenneth and in the process learn the first of many hard truths about the way adults see the world, no matter that they are often wrong. The great gift of The Rope Walk is its exquisitely poised writing. Alice's narrative is a profound experience of innocence, of perception balanced between childhood and adulthood. The flying spark of new friendship, the first intimation of adult love, the consolation of devotion, which allow Alice and Theo to shed light in the midst of darkness and to find joy in mutual understanding: these glistening threads are drawn together in a timeless story — profound, seductive, wise, and moving, from first to last. Review:"Like Brown's first novel, Rose's Garden, her sixth sets themes of tolerance and understanding in a picture-postcard setting. In a Vermont town where a description of the local library racks up a dozen adjectives (including 'tall,' 'bracing,' 'rippling,' 'silvery' and 'delicious'), children collect butterflies and recite 'Hiawatha.' When Kenneth Fitzgerald, the artist who sponsored the library's transformation from dreary to spectacular, returns to his childhood home dying of AIDS, he asks 10-year-old Alice MacCauley and her neighbors' manic visiting mixed-race grandson, Thelonious Swann — 'a tawny little lion cub' — to come by and read to him in the afternoons. Alice's mother died young; her father teaches Shakespeare and recites it around the house (while her older brothers blow smoke rings), so Alice is primed for literature. All three are drawn into Lewis and Clark's journals as Alice reads them aloud; the explorers' historic journey stands in for Fitzgerald's journey toward death and for Alice and Theo's trip into nascent first love and adulthood. The rope Alice walks isn't very high off the ground, but Brown keeps it taut and stretched across some engaging vistas." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"This coming-of-age novel begins with Alice MacCauley on the morning of her 10th birthday, as she sits on the windowsill of her bedroom, viewing the scene below through the opening of a square made by her fingers — a make-believe camera lens, and a trope that repeats throughout the story. Alice's mother is dead, but Alice has plenty of family and people who care for her: a father, five older brothers,... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) Review:"It takes a masterly touch to make believable Alice's maturity and her unfiltered forthrightness when telling her story. Brown's exquisite word paintings of the details of childhood are tone-perfect and utterly irresistible." Library Journal Review:"This beautifully written novel captures the dignity and grace of a young girl coming into knowledge of herself and the world....[A] celebration of two special children and a memorial to innocence lost." Chicago Tribune Review:"Though Brown brings a formidable intelligence and elegant sensibility to her carefully executed literary novel, the result sometimes seems like required reading. Happily, any hint of fussiness is redeemed by her generous-spirited and energetic creation...of two engaging and memorable characters." Booklist About the AuthorCarrie Brown is the author of four novels and a collection of short stories. She has won many awards for her work, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the Barnes and Noble Discover Award, and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Her most recent novel, Confinement, won the Library of Virginia Book Award. She lives in Virginia with her husband, the novelist John Gregory Brown, and their three children. She teaches at Sweet Briar College. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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