The Bright Forever by Lee Martin

My Rating: 7/10

I came across this book on one of the book club’s sites. Since it had a good review, I picked it up for a read. Well…I liked it. What’s the genre of the book? I can’t say its mystery, but till the end, you would not know what really happened…It’s more of a life fiction, deeply affecting novel about how an event that happened in a small town of Indiana affected everyone’s lives there.

The author has a unique writing style- each chapter has the title of the person who is going to talk about his life. So, if the chapter is Gilley, that chapter had the Gilley talking about his day and life. It actually seems like he is actually talking to you. When the story starts, you would feel you know how it’s gonna be. But, the story unfolds slowly, taking a new turn with each chapter; making it intriguing and really an interesting read. By the end of the book, I felt that I know the characters in the book; I could empathize with their guilt, their grief and their sunken feeling. That’s the power of a good writer! Here’s what it about:

EXCERPT

On a sleepy summer evening in a tiny Indiana town in the 1970s, nine-year-old Katie Mackey rushes out of her house and hops on her bike to return an overdue library book - never to return. Narrated with thirty years of retrospective by Henry Dees, the reclusive, lonely math tutor who had been giving Katie summer lessons, Martin's narrative plunges into the minds of each of its characters in order to reveal the darkness behind the pastoral facade.

If only" Katie's father hadn't wanted her to return her library books. If only her brother hadn't been angry at her and ratted her out over dinner. If only her bike chain had been fixed - if only.

Few lines I liked ans cannot forget:

The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

Life had gone on. It always did. That’s what you learned as you got older. Time. It kept moving. You couldn’t stop it.

You can buy the book here.