The Boy on the Bus
A Novel
-
- $16.99
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
Meg Landry expected it to be a day like any other -- her asthmatic eight-year-old son would step off the bus, home from school. But on this day, the boy on the bus is not Meg's son -- or at least doesn't appear to be. This new boy shares Charlie's copper hair, tea-brown eyes, and slight frame. But there is something profoundly, if indefinably, different about him. He has a finer nose, his skin is shinier, and his face looks more mature, as if he has grown into being Charlie more than the real Charlie ever had.
In the wake of Meg's quiet alarm, her far-flung family returns home, and a jangly unease sets in. Neither Charlie's father, Jeff, nor Charlie's rebellious teenage sister, Katie, can help Meg settle the question of the boy. They look to her for certainty -- after all, shouldn't a mother know her own child?
In this daring novel, Deborah Schupack dissects a family stretched out along the seams of postmodern small-town life. With the precision of a literary wordsmith, Schupack has crafted an extraordinary tale of a mother's love for her son and a mystery that may ultimately rip them apart. Tense and atmospheric, this debut is a rare combination of intellectual sophistication and page-turning suspense.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
One afternoon, Vermont housewife Meg discovers that the boy on the school bus outside her door is almost, but not quite, her eight-year-old son, Charlie. It's a typical X-Filesscenario, but in the hands of first-time novelist Schupack it becomes an acute psychological study of alienated ex-urban family life. Meg's panic recalls her aloof, restless husband from his job in Canada and her bratty, rebellious teenage daughter from boarding school, but neither they nor the local sheriff nor the family doctor can verify Charlie's authenticity. Unlike the old, asthmatic Charlie, who was both an emotional anchor and a ball-and-chain to Meg, the new Charlie is more mature, robust and adventurous, threatening to follow his father and sister out of the house, untether Meg from her caretaker role and force her to confront her own thwarted ambitions. Schupack writes in a restrained, naturalistic style. Her characters are sharply observed, and she has an ear for familial bickering and the idioms of male withdrawal and teen exasperation ("What's so wrong with the little creep now?"). The central figure of Charlie is not as well realized; he is less a character than a symbol of familial estrangement and a projection of Meg's dread of the confines of marriage and motherhood. As a plot engine, the mystery of Charlie's identity sometimes feels forced (can't someone run a DNA test on this kid?), but the predicament allows Schupack to draw a subtle and chilling portrait of that much scrutinized figure, the postfeminist wife.
