#13 Martin Bayer (1976) Mark Helprin
This is a quaint atmosphere piece about a 10-year old boy
(well…10 and three-fifths) and his family taking an autumn vacation in
Amagansett on the eastern tip of Long Island.
The year is 1916. Martin
struggles, as all boys do, with understanding what’s going on in the adult
world around him and trying to be understood by the same. These efforts usually end up with him being
patronized, laughed at, or warned to behave himself. Mostly he brushes them off losing interest
in this strange grown-up world and trades it in for more boyish pursuits.
When a pair of military men visit the hotel, Martin’s small
isolated world is in danger. He sees
them as a threat to normalcy and feels the need to protect his older sister
from their outside-ness. He accidentally
comes upon one of the soldiers and the innkeeper’s daughter swimming and
kissing naked in the ocean. And just that quick, his childhood is lost. Like America on the verge of World War-I,
that innocence will be gone forever.
Though pretty well written, this is not exactly my style of
story. Its like looking at a faded
photograph, it could be interesting as long as the subject matter is interesting.
Notable Passage: “For the first time, Martin discovered that
he carried a store of memories which emerged bright and clear in his eyes and
gave him access to a world of random and sudden images as beautiful as the
upwelling of music."
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