An Ocean in Iowa - Tapa blanda

Fresh and funny second novel from the author of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?

‘Seven,’ says Scotty Ocean early in this novel, ‘is going to be my year.’ But it is a traumatic one. His mother, Joan Ocean, struggling to conform to the stereotype of the 1960s middle-American happy housewife, turns instead to painting nude self-portraits and drinking beer. Eventually she walks out on the family and ends up hospitalized; when she emerges it is not to go back to adoring and puzzled Scotty in Des Moines but to start a new life on her own. Scotty is the only boy in his class who doesn’t have a mother, while his father, the Judge, tries, with only mixed success, to recreate a ‘normal’ family life for his son and teenage daughters.

Hedges paints an entirely convincing, fresh, painful and often hilariously funny picture of family life, its pressures and absurdities, through the eyes of Scotty Ocean. This is a gentle novel of remarkable power and resonance. Beautifully crafted and constantly surprising, it explores the fragile contracts between parents and children, and what it really means to grow up.

'Seven' announces Scotty Ocean, 'is going to be my year.' But no one could have guessed just how significant the year would be. It is the year Joan Ocean, a frustrated artist with a drinking problem, finally has a breakdown and decides to leave her husband. It is the year Scotty's father, the Judge, becomes a single father and the year his children learn to cope without a mother. Scotty tries to be a 'good boy' so his mother will come back to him, but this becomes an ever more difficult task.

In the small town of West Glen, Iowa, where most mothers are the picture of convention, Joan Ocean is a chain-smoking, beer-guzzling painter of nude self-portraits, an anomaly at best. But, to her adoring son, she is a figure of light and love, even after she abandons her family. The Judge strives to fill the void with silly nicknames and burned meatloaf, while Scotty's teenage sisters react with adolescent scorn. It is a lot for a seven-year-old to manage, even with the belief that 'Seven can handle this.' The question is, will he make it to eight without blowing himself up?

Peter Hedges paints an entirely convincing fresh, painful and deeply tender picture of family life, its pressures and absurdities, through the eyes of Scotty Ocean and reproduces 1960s America with unerring accuracy and comic insight. Moving but entirely unsentimental, 'An Ocean in Iowa' rises above time and place to give a raw and vivid evocation of the depth and determination of a child's mind.