I have a ton of reviews to write, having been in a bit of a reading frenzy, so starting with the difficult task of one for whom I loved to begin with and then wanted to throw across the room.

Buckeye is popular work of historical fiction in the US and it is a novel a friend asked me if I had read, after seeing a promising review in the New York Times, buying a copy, abandoning it after 100 pages.

Although suspect, because there is a point with hyper popularity, beyond which I know it is probably not for me, I read the premise and thought it interesting, then when author and reviewer Margaret Renkl made the comment below, I decided to read it, rather than pre-judge and discern.

Sometimes I read a novel so completely absorbing, so populated by unforgettable characters in a world so beautifully built that entering it feels like coming home, and I can’t let myself start a new novel for a week, out of fear of breaking the spell.

If you love deceptively simple stories about deceptively ordinary human beings, about how family traumas and cultural prejudices can reverberate through the generations and how family secrets acquire ever more devastating power as the years unfold, please read this book. Especially if you believe in forgiveness and healing, and especially when forgiveness and healing are hard earned. I loved this book more than I can say. I absolutely loved it. Margaret Renkl

An Enticing Opening Scene

Buckeye is a novel set in Bonhomie, Ohio and opens with an enticing scene that gets the reader wondering who that was and what just happened. The narrative then shifts back to the early years of both those characters involved in that opening scene and we read about their lives leading up to that moment.

The two characters we meet in the opening scene are Margaret Salt, who grew up in an orphanage in Doyle, Ohio, having been dropped at its door in the middle of the night in October 1918.

The baby was eight, maybe nine months old, Lydia guessed. Pinned to her tiny shirt was a handwritten note. Please take care of this baby as I cannot. I named her Margaret, but call her what you like.

A ‘Buck’ Eye on Women

I guess this was probably one of the first red flags for me. I mean, leaving a baby outside an orphanage at that age indicated the mother had tried to take care of her child, but to flippantly write ‘call her what you like’ is an aggressive stance, inferring a lack of love or care, the first instance of portrayal of a mother as lacking.

Like other girls in the orphanage, Margaret would go in and out of families who wanted to adopt, then changed their minds, until finally in 1936, when she reached eighteen years, she moved to the city of Columbus, where her real adult education began.

Eve Entices Adam With the Forbidden Fruit

And that opening scene? Well there we meet Margaret in 1945 as news of the allied victory in Europe is spreading through the community. Margaret walks into a hardware store in Bonhomie, where she now lived and asked the man behind the counter, Cal Jenkins if he had a radio. She needs him to turn it on and they will listen together. Their encounter represents a turning point in both their lives, but then the narrative switches back to tell their backstories up until that moment and ultimately beyond it.

But she was looking at the caramel-coloured radio. Her eyes were glistening. “Do you think- ” she said, then paused as if unsure of what she wanted to ask him. She took a breath. “Do you think people will start coming home?”

Cal is married to his high school girlfriend Becky, who from a young age has the ability to hear voices of the dead and as an adult has a line of people coming to her door wanting to hear these messages. After a few dates with Cal, she presented him with a letter to herself that she had written when she was eight years old, asking him to return it when she turned sixty. She wanted to know if the future was knowable by forgetting what was in the letter and encountering it later on.

“Will our older selves be anything like our younger selves thought we would be? We can only find out by writing it down and then putting it out of our minds and letting life take its course. The unraveling of time should be mysterious, don’t you think?”

Margaret has a rough start in Colombus, until she meets Felix, who seems perfect in every way, except that something is not quite right, which the reader quickly becomes aware of, though not Margaret.

Les Bons Hommes of Bonhomie

The novel follows the lives of these couples in the suburban town of Bonhomie against the background of significant change in America, and the ripple effect of that encounter on the lives of these two couples, who are forced to confront what they might wish to stay hidden.

The suburban neighbourhood and 1940’s setting gave me a bit of the Revolutionary Road vibe, (Frank and April Wheeler, self-assured Connecticut suburbanites) that feeling of mild discontent that is ignored in order to keep up appearances, or grudges held when two people are unable to communicate and resolve their differences, that are likely to push them to cross lines of self-sabotage that force the issue.

Unpopular Opinion

I really enjoyed the first half of the novel, it is engaging and moves at a good pace, however towards the end, I started to notice certain patterns and once I saw them I couldn’t unsee them, in particular that all the nurturing characters were men, that the female characters either take a back seat, or are completely absent. When one character checks in on another or thinks to bring groceries, it is nearly always the men. For sure, this can be true, however this very domestic fiction in many ways felt inauthentic. A buck eye on les bons hommes?

I could feel myself bristling at the way the adult characters mismanaged the identity revelation, unable to understand the inevitable impact, there was not any addressing the unconscious impact of this throughout the character’s childhood. Again, that was probably the case, but adults ignoring the human rights of a child to know who they are, abusing their power and delaying the inevitable. Wondering about that reaction, not seeing their own violent part in it? It’s downright cruel.

The lack of reconciliation or exploration of Margaret’s story irked as well. Ultimately, this felt like a story of men being adequate family carers, perhaps we lack those kind of stories, but this just didn’t sit right with me.

Part of what had appealed to her about Columbus, when she was eighteen, was its vastness – all there was to see and do, and the chance to be a part of it. What appealed now was its vast anonymity, its ability to cloak people in its destiny, so that you could live your life without answering too many questions or encountering too many expectations. Right up to your last moments, if you wanted, so that the most lasting impression you left on your neighbours was that they’d known nothing about you.

But don’t take my word for it, unless you’re sensitive to to the same issues as I am, you might love this as many other (the majority) readers have.

Next up, another popular work, but one that has been a word of mouth sensation, a manuscript that was rejected over 100 times, because who wants to read a novel of letters? Well, me and a few friends and correspondents for starters!