Reviews

Jeffrey Ford’s writing has been compared to Kafka, Dante, and Caleb Carr. In this powerful tale he turns his talents to nostalgia and youth, bringing the optimism and dark underbelly of 1960s small-town suburbia to life. The Shadow Year is a time marked by strange events for one particular Long Island sixth grader: a classmate disappears; a man in a large white car appears; a peeping tom prowls the neighborhood; the school librarian goes crazy. The narrator and his older brother, Jim, keep track of these events in “Botch Town,” a neighborhood of cardboard houses and clay figures that they build in their basement.

But then the brothers realize that their younger sister, Mary, is secretly rearranging the clay figures - changes that are soon reflected in actual events. With the help of their sister, the brothers investigate the disappearance of a neighborhood boy and make a discovery that will cast a long shadow across their lives.