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Overview
A woman and her young son travel by car through the southern and midwestern United States in this heartbreakingly spare novel-in-dialogue. As the mother drives, she and the boy, Roy, trade impressions of the landscape and of life, in the process approaching an understanding of each other and their shared inner landscape.
"Mom, can we drive to Wyoming?" "You mean now?" "Uh-huh. Is it far?" "Very far. We're almost to Georgia." "Can we go someday?" "Sure, Roy, we'll go." "We won't tell anyone, right, Mom?" "No, baby, nobody will know where we are." "And we'll have a dog." "I don't see why not." "From now on when anything bad happens, I'm going to think about Wyoming. Running with my dog." "It's a good thing, baby. Everybody needs Wyoming." —from Wyoming
Synopsis
A picturesque novel in dialogue by the author of Wild at Heart and Night People.
(9/24/00) - New York Times Book Review
...that Gifford forges these characters almost entirely put of dialogue makes their affecting humanity doubly impressive...
Editorials
New York Times Book Review
...that Gifford forges these characters almost entirely put of dialogue makes their affecting humanity doubly impressive...—(9/24/00)
Publishers Weekly -
Prolific novelist (Wild at Heart) and screenwriter (Lost Highway) Gifford delivers a sedate story written almost entirely in meandering dialogue between a mother and her precocious nine- year-old son, Roy. The book takes place in the mid-1950s as Kitty and Roy drive across the American South and Midwest. Traveling from place to place--rarely leaving the car--they try to pass time in idle, soft-focus banter about their hopes and disappointments, occasionally musing about such big topics as fate, personal loss, divorce, death and the soul. The background unfolds: Kitty has left Roy's dishonest father, whose health is failing, while Roy craves reassurances that both parents still love him. But content mirrors form in that, just as the two never arrive at any final destination, their desultory conversations rarely resolve issues or discover anything new; and the novel's brief, episodic chapters ensure that no subject is dealt with profoundly or in full. Action is generally light (a train passes, a road curves, a hotel room is dirty), but even when more dramatic events happen (i.e., Roy's father takes a turn for the worse), the voices of mother and son are sometimes indistinguishable and their reminiscences and longings are so vague and personal as to be irrelevant. The pair seem lost, both on their journey and in lax, unremarkable conversation, leaving the reader to wonder why Gifford won't give them a bit more gas, a few more twists in the road and, above all, some direction. Line drawings by Gifford throughout. (July) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|School Library Journal
Prolific novelist (Wild at Heart) and screenwriter (Lost Highway) Gifford delivers a sedate story written almost entirely in meandering dialogue between a mother and her precocious nine- year-old son, Roy. The book takes place in the mid-1950s as Kitty and Roy drive across the American South and Midwest. Traveling from place to place--rarely leaving the car--they try to pass time in idle, soft-focus banter about their hopes and disappointments, occasionally musing about such big topics as fate, personal loss, divorce, death and the soul. The background unfolds: Kitty has left Roy's dishonest father, whose health is failing, while Roy craves reassurances that both parents still love him. But content mirrors form in that, just as the two never arrive at any final destination, their desultory conversations rarely resolve issues or discover anything new; and the novel's brief, episodic chapters ensure that no subject is dealt with profoundly or in full. Action is generally light (a train passes, a road curves, a hotel room is dirty), but even when more dramatic events happen (i.e., Roy's father takes a turn for the worse), the voices of mother and son are sometimes indistinguishable and their reminiscences and longings are so vague and personal as to be irrelevant. The pair seem lost, both on their journey and in lax, unremarkable conversation, leaving the reader to wonder why Gifford won't give them a bit more gas, a few more twists in the road and, above all, some direction. Line drawings by Gifford throughout. (July) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|Andrew Miles
[A] tender and understated story...That Gifford forges these characters almost entirely out of dialogue makes their affecting humanity doubly impressive; by the novel's end, Roy and his mother are likely to live as vividly in the reader's mind as their unseen Wyoming lives in theirs.—New York Times Book Review