When everything goes wrong, can the magic of books give the necessary answers to set things right? Probably not! Then what about the magic of one special book? Now possibilities emerge.
Talented young Irish author Cecelia Ahern engages her delightful imagination in The Book of Tomorrow (2009, HaperCollins, London, 320 pages). This novel has mystery and merit, but falls short of lofty heights in the author's earlier work.
“In The Book of Tomorrow, I share my belief in the magic of books, how I believe books must contain some sort of homing device, which allows them to draw the correct reader to them,” Ahern says. “Books choose their readers, not the other way around.”
Used to privilege, but less than appreciative, teenaged protagonist Tamara Goodwin goes from riches to near-homelessness after finding her father sprawled dead, a suicide victim. “It is not possible to bring my dad back to life. I tried, when I found him lying dead on the floor of his office – very dead, in fact – blue in the face, with an empty pill container by his side and an empty bottle of whisky on the desk. I didn't know what I was doing but I pressed my lips to his regardless, and pumped up and down on his chest furiously. That didn't work.”
With the family's finances in ruins, Tamara and her grief-gripped mother must move to the country and stay with relatives in a modest house beside a different ruins, those of a burned-out castle with tragic history.
Harsh realities need facing. “I'm not heaping all the hate on my dad here. I was a horrible person. I was the worst possible daughter. They gave me everything and I rarely said thank you. Or if I said it, I don't think I ever meant it. I don't actually think that I knew what it meant.”
Tamara finds things to dislike about herself and almost everyone else. “We weren't evil people, we just weren't nice. We didn't offer anything to anybody in the world but we took an awful lot.”
Tamara's surroundings differ big-time from those she has known. Misunderstandings arise at every turn. “Two miles down the road is a post office, which is operated from somebody's house, and across the road from that is the smallest school I've ever seen, which unlike my school at home, which has activities every hour throughout the year, is completely empty during the summer. I asked if there were any yoga classes or anything in it and Rosaleen told me she'd show me how to make yoghurt herself. She seemed so happy that I couldn't correct her.”
As the protagonist wonders how to cope, reluctant even to stay in touch with her friends still in Dublin, a mobile library, a bus full of books, appears. She befriends its driver and notices a puzzling book, its cover locked shut. After “borrowing” that book, she discovers it's a diary that fills itself with details of the events in her life a day before they happen. “My jaw dropped. The first page had already been written, each line neatly filled... in my handwriting.”
It really is a “book of tomorrow”, which poses some big questions. “What if, what if, what if... What if we knew what tomorrow would bring? Would we fix it? Could we?”
Despite the diary's special help, some incidents jolt Tamara almost as much as her dad's death did. “...what I saw shocked me to the core so that I just stood there, frozen, my mouth agape, unable to breath properly.”
Technically well written, The Book of Tomorrow falters in other ways. Tamara isn't especially likeable or fascinating. Some readers won't care about her problems or crave to know what happens next – and when readers don't care, momentum fades.
Part of the difficulty comes from the lack of a proper villain. Without anyone to despise, readers turn lackadaisical. Instead of an evil culprit, these pages offer only a hidden family-tree full of misguided folks prone to bad judgment and inept at expressing themselves. “And that is how the Goodwin problems always were fixed. Fix them on the surface but don't go to the root, always ignoring the elephant in the room. I think that morning was when I realized I'd grown up with an elephant in every room. It was practically our family pet.”
On the plus side, Tamara and the author squeeze in some advice, words of wisdom that can serve readers well in their own lives. “A funeral is like a little game, really. You have to just play along and say the right thing and behave the right way until it's over. Be pleasant but don't smile too much; be sad but don't overdo it or the family will feel worse than they already do. Be hopeful but don't let your optimism be taken as a lack of empathy or an inability to deal with the reality. Because if anybody was to be truly honest there would be a lot of arguments, finger-pointing, tears, snot and screaming.”
Trained as a journalist, Ahern, the daughter of a former Irish prime minister, has written a stack of popular novels. They include Where Rainbows End, If You Could See Me Now, There's No Place Like Here, Thanks For the Memories and The Gift.
The Book of Tomorrow may disappoint some readers, but perhaps only temporarily. Ahern has the ability and means to rebound by telling more and better tales.
Approval rating: 59 per cent.
For more information: www.cecelia-ahern.com
(January 2, 2012)
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