Ship Sooner: A Novel - Hardcover

Sullivan, Mary

2.98

165 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060562404 ISBN 13: 9780060562403

Publisher: William Morrow, 2004

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Ship Sooner hears everyone and everything in her sleepy Massachusetts town. The sounds of frost forming on glass, a rabbit hopping on just-fallen snow, and a fork crimping a piecrust are as clear to Ship as an old Sinatra tune playing at full volume in the town diner. Misunderstood by her classmates and ignored by her disdainful older sister, Ship consoles herself by listening to the sounds of others' secrets: her mother's lips pressing against those of a balding salesman's; her sister Helen's trysts in a secluded shed; their family friend Trudy's breath quickening as she cuts the hair of the town priest; and her only friend Brian Dodd's promising his parents not to tell where he goes with them on Sunday afternoons.

Ship's isolation intensifies when Brian disappears inexplicably the day after Christmas. During the long winter of 1981, as Helen retreats behind her slammed bedroom door and their mother is increasingly absent, Ship keeps vigil for Brian and slowly loses hope. But as winter melts into spring, an unexpected cry from the woods will lead her to make an astonishing discovery, one that compels her to abandon all that she has known and set out on a journey that will transform her life.

This is the story of a gifted young girl who comes to realize that what has cut her off from others has also given her the means to become her truest self. In vibrant prose, Mary Sullivan captures the tender and tough essence of an adolescent whose extraordinary sensitivity teaches us to listen for those softest of sounds -- of hope, need, and desire -- that whisper through all our lives. Ship Sooner is an utterly original character whose distinctive voice and startling perception of the undertones of everyday life will hook readers from the very first page and linger on in their memories long after the last page is turned.

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About the Author:

Mary Sullivan, author of Stay, has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award and a St. Botolph Foundation Award. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and daughter.

From The Washington Post:

Ship Sooner, the unfortunately named protagonist of Mary Sullivan's Persian miniature of a second novel, is possessed of "extraordinary" hearing, and so this is a story of hearing and listening, eavesdropping and overhearing. It's about what people catch and what they miss, the tinkling of little bells in the distance, the rustling of leaves far away -- sounds and noises that most ears can't pick up. But Ship can, and this is both her blessing and her curse.

She's 13, and lives with her older sister, Helen, and her single mother, Trudy, in Herringtown, an Anywhereville small town of the sort that is on the wane in contemporary America. The haircutting place -- where Ship can't stand to let the scissors near her ears, because the sound is too painful -- is called Hair Camp, the diner is Jimmy Joe's, the local candy company is the Gooey Factory. There's an out-of-time feeling to this novel, which at times makes it not concrete enough, hard to grab hold of, but frequently makes it ethereal and lovely.

The story builds slowly, and Sullivan's writing is spare, relying on an accretion of resonant phrases and sentences -- almost like poetry -- to amass power. She's masterly at getting us to understand the joys and sorrows that attend Ship's sharpened hearing. Of course, for an adolescent, it's wonderful to overhear secrets and know things you're not supposed to. On the other hand, it's awful to be different in a small town, a freak wearing "ear caps" to soften all that ambient noise.

But Sullivan's singular achievement is to make us feel what it's like inside Ship's head, where foreground sound and background noise all exist on the same overwhelming plane. Ship explains, early in the novel: "There is a pause now -- silence for them, but not for me. The kitchen faucet drips, the overhead light hums, Trudy pulls on the cigarette she's not supposed to be smoking, Helen rubs her hands together, Mr. Dodd swallows a burp, the heat sifts through the walls, Teresa grinds her teeth, in the cabinet a pan settles into another pan, Brian's heart beats. I listen to the thump-thumping beneath his jacket until it's all I hear. That's what I do when the noise crowds my head. Thump thump shhh."

At first Ship Sooner appears to be simply an acutely observed tale of small town life, with the added, unusual twist of Ship's hearing. Single mothers work too hard for too little money; long-gone fathers are wondered about; older sisters are unfeeling; the boy next door might be Ship's best friend, might be something more. It's not a romanticized portrait, to be sure -- cruelties, both small and less so, abound: Too many drinks are drunk by the adults, a zombie-like mother is paralyzed by a long-ago tragedy, a nasty rich boy compels a sex act, several animals meet untimely and gory deaths. But halfway through, the plot takes an abrupt turn, turning the book into something of a thriller, albeit a quiet one. The turn adds excitement, yet it's a bit jarring, as the whole tone and register have changed -- more is at stake now. The novel is still a miniature, but life-and-death issues have come into play.

Sullivan manages to recover, though. She gets her story back on track by painting a fine portrait of Ship's odyssey after the plot turn, including the girl's hearing issues throughout. There's not a scene or action that doesn't reverberate with what Ship hears -- a cry, a bark, a garbled word. At the novel's close, several mysteries and question marks are resolved satisfactorily. But the novel's final paragraph, though evocatively written, is utterly, maddeningly elliptical. For her next novel, Sullivan, with her command of language and her quirky and closely delineated characters, has only to work on her plotting skills.

Reviewed by Anne Glusker

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