The Box Children - Softcover

Wyse, Sharon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573229962 ISBN 13: 9781573229968

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 2003

Synopsis

Finding her only friends in five tiny dolls she has named for her miscarried siblings, twelve-year-old Lou Ann witnesses her once-again-pregnant mother's grasp on reality slipping away and must rely on her own wit and courage to make sense of adolescence. A first novel. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author

Sharon Wyse is a native Texan who spent her summers on a wheat farm until she was 15. A classically trained singer and former disc jockey, she holds degrees in English, journalism, and music, and has received two fellowships to the Ragdale Foundation writers' colony.

From Publishers Weekly

Taking the form of the diary of a na‹ve 11-year-old girl growing up in 1960s West Texas, this emotionally complex story entertains, frustrates and tugs at the heartstrings. Wyse's simply written tale is alive with the raw honesty and humorously candid observations of farm girl Lou Ann Campbell as she struggles to make sense of her family's ever-increasing dysfunction. Her neurotic mother, who has suffered through five miscarriages, is pregnant again but is still downing beer by the six-pack. Lou Ann's father is no better, carrying his sexual exploits from outside the home into his daughter's bedroom. As the emotional distance between Lou Ann and her older brother, Will, increases by the day, she finds herself with only five small dolls to talk to and the scattered pieces of paper that make up her secret diary to confide in. The dolls, which she keeps in a shoebox and takes out only when she is alone, represent her five unborn siblings, each with its own persona. As her story progresses, Lou Ann finds human friendship with a pen pal from Oklahoma City, one of the older boys hired to help with the wheat harvest and to her mother's grave disapproval the daughter of a Mexican prostitute. Wyse captures the voice of her young protagonist with remarkable skill and naturalness, from her innocent fantasies ("I wish we knew how to do acrobatics together or sing all in harmony so we could go on TV as a big famous family") to her bleakest moments ("My eyes are flat. All they are doing is looking out"). The novel's conclusion can only just be construed as hopeful, but Lou Ann's hardheaded (and hard-won) optimism rings true.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1573229962
• ISBN 13: 9781573229968
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192