Make Believe - Softcover

Scott, Joanna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1860469760 ISBN 13: 9781860469763

Publisher: Vintage, 2002

Synopsis

Because her black boyfriend Kamon Gilbert was killed in a city street before the birth of their child, Jenny Templin moved out of the city. Because she lived so far away, she bought a car, and because she had a car she took a job. Because she had a job she gave her boy to his black grandparents to care for most of the time. Because she worked so hard she liked to relax with a few drinks after work before she picked up the boy. And because she'd had too many drinks one night and because she was dead tired, her car spun on the road and rolled, leaving the boy orphaned at the age of three, with two sets of grandparents, one white and one black, each determined to raise the boy their own way.

About this title

Review

Joanna Scott, much lauded for her 1997 gothic, The Manikin, sloughs that novel's gloom for the less rarified air of familial torment and interracial romance in Make Believe. A compact jostling of flashback, shifting angles, and hallucinatory impression, her fifth novel is held together by 4-year-old Bo, the object of a contentious custody battle after his teenage mother dies in an automobile accident. Through the boy's eyes we see the disorienting kaleidoscope of adult ambition and impotence, as those vying for him try to sort out not only his life, but their own. "Weep for him," the narrator adjures, "if you're susceptible to pity. But don't let your eyes grow so foggy that you miss the subtle transformation taking place, the transformation of pity into something far more powerful than even Bo could have anticipated."

When volatile Jenny Templin falls for Kamon Gilbert, she imagines that bearing his child will win her both security and love. But Kamon--artistic, yearning, and, much to the displeasure of Jenny's mother and stepfather, black--is killed while Jenny is pregnant, leaving her and the child alone with his sheltering, if overwhelmed, parents. The Gilberts, in turn, seem the obvious choice for guardianship once Bo is orphaned. Jenny's parents, however, struggling with shame and a latent covetousness, win custody of the spirited Bo, casting both families into degrees of disarray.

Bo is the eye of the hurricane throughout. "Think of all he'd been through, all the waiting, his daddy no more than letters carved in stone, his mama gone off somewhere, his grandparents scared away by the law." Predictably, his life with Jenny's parents--who refuse, even, to call him Bo--is trying. Scott tells the story in deliberate, even tones, frequently cataloging the broad and disparate panorama of Bo's horizon. What she uncovers is a world where no one is entirely devoid of selfish motivation, where love can be equal parts affection and, sadly, make-believe. --Ben Guterson

About the Author

JOANNA SCOTT is the author of several novels, including Tourmaline a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award; The Manikin, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; Arrogance, based on the life of Egon Schiele; and, most recently, Follow Me. She has also written the short story collections, Everybody Loves Somebody and Various Antidotes, which was a finalist for the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award. She lives in Rochester, New York with her husband and two daughters.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1860469760
• ISBN 13: 9781860469763
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256