James's Reviews > Going All the Way

It was something that Sonny had never really thought about before, and he felt a sudden, sharp sympathy for his mother, not as "his mother" but as Alma, a person, a woman who was growing old. He looked away from her, out the window, at the stores on Broad Ripple Avenue. Hardware. Five and Ten. Drugs. And there was nothing in the stores, nothing in any of the stores, that would help. There was nothing you could buy that would help; no monkey wrench from the hardware store, no toys from the Five and Ten, not even any drugs from the drugstore that could change anything, really. Maybe just looking at the things, though, and buying a few of them now and then helped take your mind off the thing that you couldn't change at all, which was that you were getting old, that very moment, everyone everywhere, turning into the person who would finally die and not be a person at all, no matter how hard that was to believe. Sonny knew it was true of his own mother; she had said it in a way, and he could see it. He was sorry, and yet it didn't really make him sad down deep, because he couldn't really believe it was happening to him, too. He believed it in his head, but not in his feelings inside. Even when he tried to grasp the fact, he felt that it wouldn't be happening to him for so long that by the time it did he wouldn't really care, it wouldn't matter very much. Of course, maybe his mother had felt that way too once, back when she lived in the snapshots before they got curly and yellow.

Brilliant melancholy Americana that also manages to be incredibly funny. Sonny and Gunner's relationship is very touching, and the stuff with Buddie is quite heartbreaking. Exactly my kind of novel.