“If you know how to read, you know how forever.  You can’t unread.  You can’t ever look at a word and not know what the word is, precisely and permanently. You just can’t do it.  They should tell you that when you’re a kid, that once you get into phonics you’re into them for life.” –from Shadow Baby

Shadow Baby is the first book I have read by Alison McGhee. It is safe to say I will be reading more of McGhee. You know this kind of book—that when you get done with it, you immediately wish you had another work by the same author.

In Shadow Baby, McGhee has partnered an unlikely pair of characters. The narrator is eleven-year-old Clara winter (not, that’s not a typo--in Clara’s mind, her last name does not deserve a capital letter and it is a rare person who can actually hear the lowercase pronunciation of her last name.) The intrepid Ms. winter lives in the Adirondacks, writes book reports on books that have not been written yet, worships the pioneer spirit of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and feels a responsibility to the items for sale in the local grocer’s discard bin.  As if the insane chickens that she is in charge of feeding are not enough, Clara’s mother is frustratingly close-mouthed about their shared past, which includes Clara’s twin sister, Baby Girl, who died at birth during a snowstorm. (You might begin to see why Clara has a problem with seasonal names).     

When Clara is assigned to interview an American immigrant, she chooses the reticent Georg Kominsky, who lives in a local trailer park.  Armed with her roll of accounting tape (which she purchased from the discard bin, of course), Clara enters Kominsky’s life as his “apprentice, ” determined to elicit and transcribe Kominsky’s history as a migrant tinsmith. Intermingled with the “old man’s” history are Clara’s speculations about her own past. When history fails to reveal itself, Clara’s fertile imagination creates alternate histories for Kominsky, as well as for her own family. What transpires is poignant and haunting, both terribly funny and terribly sad. Clara winter and Georg Kominsky are two of the best characters I’ve encountered in a long time, and I wish I could have spent more time with them. This is a truly magical book, no matter what time of year it is.

Grade: A

Call Number: Brow PS 3563 .C36378 S53 2000