Amazon.com reviewer reviews Charlie No Face

Until recently I didn’t know that there were well respected ‘readers’ who routinely review books on amazon.com. One of them is Charles Ashbacher. I sent him a copy of Charlie No Face and today (2/14/11) he posted this review:

"One of the greatest adventures that nature allows us to experience is to be an eleven - year - old boy. You can play until exhausted, collapse into bed and then get up the next morning with no physical residuals. It is also the time when females start becoming interesting; to be more specific female breasts become an object of adoration. If you are lucky, you have a best friend that you do everything with and any day without the friend is a day of incompletion. Finally, it is the point where you can see adulthood in your future for the first time and if you are lucky, you learn some lessons about the world and how other people will fit into yours.

The setting is the late 1950's and the main character Jackie is an eleven - year - old boy. With his best friend Brian they have experienced many adventures since they first met in kindergarten. Jackie's mother died when he was an infant, so he lives with his father, a very involved father that works in sales. With some of the other boys, they talk incessantly about female breasts and the occasional glimpse they get of the tender flesh and the bras that hold them. As seems almost a necessity for children this age, there is the local legend of "Charlie No Face" a horribly disfigured man that wanders about in the country and supposedly kills people with impunity. Naturally, the legend has built him up to be powerful and vicious, which is the reason why he has never been stopped.

One night Jackie and Brian are in a car with an older teenager named Kelso and they are driving around looking for Charlie. To their surprise and terror, they see him on the side of the road and stop. Charlie's face is as hideous as the legend but he is smaller than envisioned and seems almost helpless. When Kelso starts poking Charlie with a stick, he does little in response and when Kelso starts being harsher, Jackie yells at him to stop. It is a simple act of kindness that will mean a great deal later.

Unfortunately, Jackie's father loses his job and he is forced to travel out of town to search for other work. In order to be safe, Jackie travels to his Aunt Dee's house in the country. As Jackie discovers, she is really not his aunt and he finally learns a great deal about his mother and her mother as well. Even though his mother has been dead for ten years, his father is still unable to talk about her.

While living with his aunt, Jackie learns how to tend the garden and a great deal about what he is. He also meets Henry, a man that lives with his aunt and that knows a great deal about life, and has many stories to tell Jackie. Henry is a loner, yet with Jackie he learns to be a person and revisit the horrors and joys of his past.
This is really a great story; every parent will hope that their child reacts like Jackie when they meet someone less fortunate than they are. In many ways the greatest exhibition of character is when you stand up for someone that is ostracized and ridiculed. While he is just a boy, Jackie proves that he is more of a man than most that meet the legal definition."

As for my current work on Chimney Bluffs - - - - I started writing this novel one year ago today. I am now over 210 pages into the story and for the first time feel stuck. Need to step back from it a little and see what emerges.