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The Truth About Celia, by Kevin Brockmeier
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While playing alone in her backyard one afternoon, seven-year-old Celia suddenly disappears while her father Christopher is inside giving a tour of their historic house and her mother Janet is at an orchestra rehearsal.
Utterly shattered, Christopher, a writer of fantasy and science fiction, withdraws from everyone around him, especially his wife, losing himself in his writing by conjuring up worlds where Celia still exists—as a child, as a teenager, as a young single mother—and revealing in his stories not only his own point of view but also those of Janet, the policeman in charge of the case, and the townspeople affected by the tragedy, ultimately culminating in a portrait of a small town changed forever. The Truth About Celia is a profound meditation on grief and loss and how we carry on in its aftermath.
- Sales Rank: #1763862 in Books
- Published on: 2004-07-13
- Released on: 2004-07-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.96" h x .51" w x 5.19" l, .56 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 240 pages
From Publishers Weekly
In his well-received story collection (Things That Fall from the Sky), Brockmeier was hailed as a writer of sinuous, startling prose. That skill is on full display again in this haunting, subdued debut novel, presented as if written by one Christopher Brooks, a science-fiction writer. In 1997, Christopher lives happily with his wife, Janet, and seven-year-old daughter, Celia, in a beautifully preserved 19th-century house in a peaceful small town. One morning, while Celia and her father are home alone, Celia vanishes from the backyard. There are no clues, no suspects. In successive stand-alone chapters, Brockmeier wanders ever further from a straight recounting of events. He describes the aftermath of Celia's disappearance from the perspective of the community at large, then turns Celia's story into a fantasy about an otherworldly green-skinned child, and finally imagines Celia in a new incarnation as a single mother called Stephanie. Christopher's and Janet's numbness-they show little rage, frustration or grief-is skillfully rendered, if sometimes oppressively subtle. Christopher lives in a hazy world of guilt, while Janet commits a few quiet acts of rebellion, disrupting the showing of a movie and finally drifting away from her husband. Brockmeier's prose is measured and lovely, and he sketches a number of eerie and compelling scenes, including those in which Christopher believes he receives telephone calls from the missing Celia on a toy phone that she treasured. The fragmented narration may deflect some readers, but others will cherish Brockmeier's seductive turns of phrase and sharp imagination.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The loss of a child is a shocking, life-altering event, especially when she disappears from beneath your very gaze. One moment seven-year-old Celia is balancing atop a stone wall--taking in the sunshine and breathing the fragrant air--and in the blink of an eye she has vanished from Christopher's sight. Christopher is in the midst of showing their historic home to some tourists while Janet is off at orchestra practice. He thinks Celia is probably playing somewhere in the yard as he passes the window facing the stone wall, and he continues to give the grand tour of the recent restorations to their vintage home. Close to a decade of searching does not return Celia, and Christopher and Janet are left with the fragments of a life they cannot piece together. Perhaps Celia is not dead and she resides in another dimension that defies time and spatial probability as we know it, or maybe Christopher is mad with inconsolable grief. This is a novel of devastation and whimsical possibility. Elsa Gaztambide
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“Emotional, heartbreaking and beautifully styled.” --San Francisco Chronicle
“Devastating and dazzling; in its painful fusion of pathos, fantasy and—ultimately—realism, Brockmeier’s heartbreaking book is reminiscent of The Lovely Bones."--Time Out
“Together, the eight stories, ranging from psychological realism to science fiction to supernatural fantasy, fall somewhere between a linked collection and a full-fledge novel, and their unvarying gracefulness takes some of the bite out of the sadness–perhaps to much. They go down more easily than, given the subject, they ought to.”
The New York Times Book Review
“Fierce and tightly imagined. . . . The Truth About Celia has all the austere ache of a cello suite. . . . [Brockmeier] proves himself a master of compassionate reach.” --The Boston Globe
“Affecting. . . . A dazzling fantasia on grief and time.” --Entertainment Weekly
“Each sentence is an elegy–a celebration of every heartbreaking detail that makes life beautiful and an exacting portrait of the bone-aching, irredeemable despair of loss. Every scene is a heart that throbs with both glorious, garrulous joy and profound, insurmountable sorrow. Like all of Kevin’s work, this book is exquisitely crafted and deeply evocative, and as a reader I am once again awed and moved to both desperation and delight.” --Thisbe Nissen, author of The Good People of New York
“A startlingly imaginative and empathetic work.” --The Miami Herald
“Brilliant. . . . beautifully written and relentlessly gripping. . . . The psychological devastation suffered by Janet and Christopher . . . is made excruciatingly tangible in [this] remarkable novel.” --Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Lyrical, magical, achingly bittersweet. . . . The mesmerizing whisper of Brockmeier’s prose [turns] skeptical readers into believers. The gentle, rolling pulse of these sentences make elegiac epiphanies out of Christopher’s grief-borne stream-of-consciousness. . . . For evoking this bleak estate with unflinching accuracy and honesty, Kevin Brockmeier deserves our praise.” --Newsday
“A compelling and intricate study of loss and acceptance.” --The Baltimore Sun
"Imagine I'm standing beside you in the bookstore. I'm putting this book in your hands. I loved The Truth About Celia: you should buy this book, take it home, and read it at once." --Kelly Link, author of Stranger Things Happen
“The gorgeous language and wealth of detail . . . elicit[s] from readers overwhelming feelings that lead to a catharsis. --The Commercial Appeal (Memphis)
“Outstanding. . . . Eloquently describes the pain of losing a child and the search for meaning in resistant fact and more resilient imagination. I highly recommend this book.” --John Hammond, The San Antonio Express-News
“Some of the most moving writing in the English language. . . . The pleasure of Brockmeier’s novel–and it is a deep pleasure indeed–comes from an excruciatingly poignant exploration of the effect of Brooks’ loss. . . . Fellow writers can only envy Brockmeier’s felicity with prose, his lyricism that aspires to great music. The Truth About Celia is modest in size but not in scope, and the magnificent prose lingers in memory long after the book is closed.” --Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
“Wrenching . . . You may never read a more beautifully written novel than this one.” --The Arkansas Times
Most helpful customer reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Wrenching and whimsical, Brockmeier's debut is a success
By Bookreporter
While reading Kevin Brockmeier's debut novel, THE TRUTH ABOUT CELIA, I was struck by this question: how can a book that is so deeply despairing and so heartrendingly devastating be such a joy to read? How can it be not just rewarding in its conclusion but enjoyable and exciting from its first sentence until its last?
On a cool day in March, seven-year-old Celia Brooks vanishes from her backyard, leaving no signs as to whether she ran away or was abducted. It's as if she simply ceased existing. The unexplained --- and apparently unexplainable --- nature of Celia's disappearance overwhelms her father and mother, Christopher and Janet, and begins to tear at their marriage as if, having been parents, they cannot return to being lovers or even friends.
Brockmeier implies that Celia's family will never know the truth about her and that they will be haunted for the rest of their lives. But he balances their consuming pain and confusion with a playful sense of wonder that underscores the novel's immense tragedy, making THE TRUTH ABOUT CELIA simultaneously wrenching and whimsical.
An Arkansas resident who has published a children's book called CITY OF NAMES and a short-story collection entitled THINGS THAT FALL FROM THE SKY, Brockmeier is a curious and questioning writer who seems to draw from many disparate influences. Comprised of agile, eloquent sentences speckled with clear, evocative imagery, his writing combines Nicholson Baker's miniaturist eye for daily routines and household rituals, Italo Calvino's ability to mirror reality through fairy tales, and Vladimir Nabokov's restless structural innovation.
It's this last one that will likely strike readers immediately in THE TRUTH ABOUT CELIA. Like Nabokov's PALE FIRE, it is a book within a book. Brockmeier presents the novel as a collection of short stories written by Christopher Brooks, even supplying a list of Christopher's previous works, a dedication page, and an author's note. This device works similarly to letters in the best epistolary novels --- as a self-expression of a character's thoughts and inner turmoil. Each of Christopher's stories is a heartbreakingly futile attempt to figure out not only what happened to Celia but also how he can move on.
In some stories, like the collection opener, "March 15, 1997," Brooks tries to reconstruct Celia's last minutes in the world and speculate on her fate. For him, this story is important not only because it slavishly imagines her last moments but, more tellingly, because it tries to save her from impending danger and keep her perpetually young and wide-eyed --- in reality an impossible feat for any parent, but more than conceivable in art.
Other stories imagine Celia's life after her disappearance. In "The Green Children," she and a boy are sucked into a parallel world that resembles a fairy tale universe. But "Seel-ya," as the narrator calls her, and the unnamed boy are vividly hued, "their skin the pale flat green of wilting grass ... the veins beneath their arms were dark and prominent, the sharp green of clover or spinach leaves." The longer they're away from their homes, the more their distinctive colors fade. It's an apt metaphor for growing up and the consequent loss of childish imagination and innocence that Celia will never experience.
In the novel's most effective stories, however, Celia's absence is a palpable presence as Christopher examines the aftershocks of her disappearance and the growing chasm in his marriage to Janet. In "As the Deck Tilted into the Ocean," Janet haunts the local Cineplex seeking isolation and escapism in all kinds of movies, but Michelle Pfeiffer's The Deep End of the Ocean and its disagreeable depiction of a missing child bring her frustration and confusion to a boil.
Borrowing an eerie idea from an old episode of The Twilight Zone, "The Telephone" picks up where "As the Deck" leaves off, but it switches to Christopher's point of view as he uncovers Janet's affair with a local police officer and tries to reconcile their marriage. That Christopher is writing these stories after the disappearance of his daughter and the dissolution of his marriage gives them an intense emotional resonance, and each one represents a profound change in his life --- a moment of hurt or healing --- that he has undergone in the wake of Celia's departure.
Ultimately, writing in the words and stories of his main character, Brockmeier reveals with a flourish the therapeutic power of art and the kernel of emotion --- whether it's despair, hope, wonder, love or anger --- that illuminate all fiction. Despite the devastation it describes, THE TRUTH ABOUT CELIA reads like a joyous celebration of life.
--- Reviewed by Stephen M. Deusner
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Interesting premise, poignant story
By Reviewer Dr. Beth
The Truth About Celia is a book within the book: in addition to being a real work of fiction, it is also a fictional book by the story's main character, author Christopher Brooks, and it comes complete with its own dedication, table of contents, and notes about the author (the fictional one, that is). If that doesn't make sense, it at least gives you a flavor for what the book is like, as it frequently verges into surreal territory. Christopher is a father whose 7-year old daughter, Celia, disappears one day while playing in the backyard. Unable to start a new novel as he had planned, Christopher instead writes about Celia--not only from his own perspective, but also from his wife's, from the people of the town, and even from Celia herself (this section is reminiscent of The Lovely Bones). The story shifts both in time--from immediately after Celia's disappearance to 7 and 14 years beyond--and in content--a short story about "The Green Children" is woven into the plot. The effect of this is interesting but disorienting, leaving the reader never being quite sure of exactly when or where they are. The tendency of the author (the real one) to use long, rambling paragraphs that go on for pages only adds to the sense of confusion. However, this short novel is certainly a worthwhile read, both for its uniqueness and its raw emotional honesty.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Deeply moving...
By A Customer
I cannot say that I know what it is like to lose a child, however, Kevin Brockmeier's novel engulfs the pain and heartache of a father who has lost his daughter. Brockmeier's delicate and beautifully written sentences led me to cry and laugh...and not stop reading until I finished. Wonderful book.
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