It turns out that snow is "actually very complicated," and so is Galloway's quirky, engrossing debut. In a small town near a river not far from a city, the narrator, an unnamed high school sophomore, encounters new Goth arrival, Anna Cayne. Holden Caulfield meets the Blair Witch, perhaps-but our narrator is more sympathetic and Anna more fascinating than their counterparts. The narrator is unsure why anyone would pursue him ("I'm bland. I'm milk. Worse, I'm water"), but pursue him Anna does, charming him with intriguing postcards, reading recommendations and long walks by the river. He's soon completely, hopelessly in love. But halfway through the story Anna disappears, leaving the narrator and the reader feeling lost and betrayed. The book becomes a search for Anna, complete with ciphers, codes, sightings and buried maps. Does affable art teacher Mr. Devon have something to do with her disappearance? Who was really driving the night fellow student Bryce Druitt slammed his car into the side of the bridge? Galloway makes plain from the beginning that everything in the book might be a clue, and that it's up to the narrator and the reader to solve the mystery for themselves. This can be great fun or lead to great frustration, depending on one's tastes, but there's no doubt that this rich, complex puzzle is the work of a talented author. (Mar.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
As Simple as Snow
Narrated by Scott Brick
Gregory GallowayUnabridged — 8 hours, 55 minutes
As Simple as Snow
Narrated by Scott Brick
Gregory GallowayUnabridged — 8 hours, 55 minutes
Overview
It begins as a romance between two teenagers searching for a deeper meaning in life in their small town. When the enigmatic Anna-who prefers to go by Anastasia-shows up in the halls of Hamilton High, she changes the narrator's life, opening his mind to Baudelaire and Mozart and revealing a world of magic tricks, ghost stories, and affectionate mind games. Together the couple probe through enchanted woods, the Internet, and everything in between-until, one winter evening a week before Valentine's Day, Anastasia disappears, leaving only a dress on a frozen river.
Suddenly alone, the narrator is hit with the weight of life's less playful mysteries, possible signs from the supernatural, and the mystery of what actually happened to his missing love. Determined to find Anna, he begins to retrace their past five months together and finds that the fragments of memory coalesce into haunting revelations.
A mesmerizing labyrinth of art, magic, and cryptic codes that sparks the imagination and teases the intellect, As Simple as Snow*is a mind-bending mystery, as well as a poignant and wise look at young love, loss, and family.
Editorial Reviews
Adult/High School-Snow, of course, is not really simple, and this clever first novel enmeshes its characters in situations that are more complex than they first appear to be. As related by an unnamed teenage boy, the suspenseful, open-ended plot concerns strange occurrences during an eventful winter in a seemingly quiet community. The possibly unreliable narrator is struggling through a lonely and rather bland adolescence until a new girl in his school's Goth crowd becomes interested in him romantically. Anna is anything but bland: she adores wordplay, odd facts, obscure jokes, ciphers, codes, the paranormal, and practical magic (especially the escape illusions of Harry Houdini), and her hobby is drafting obituaries for everyone in town. When she suddenly goes missing and is presumed dead, her heartsick boyfriend ponders her fate. An accident, surely-or was it? Suicide? Murder? Could Anna have run away? Why was her dress laid out so neatly near a hole in the ice? What about the bruises she tried to hide? Are her parents really grieving? Could a favorite teacher be involved? Though some readers may be frustrated when most questions remain unanswered, others will find their inner Nancy Drew or Hardy Boy stimulated by the abundant ambiguities, coincidences, and clues scattered throughout. An intriguing debut.-Starr E. Smith, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Engagingly written debut about a mysterious teenage girl's disappearance, and more's the pity: if Galloway were less sure and fluent, readers would be less likely to jump through his hoops before realizing he didn't know why they were doing it, either. Anastasia (Anna) Cayne transfers to Hamilton High and hangs out with the Goths, but the story's unnamed narrator-boyfriend (an angsty teenager down on hypocrisy, we'll call him Holden for convenience) discovers that the only resemblance between the Goths and Anna is the black mascara they both wear. Anna is accessorized with-if not completely composed of-a full set of cool outsider cultural tics. She spends her time writing fanciful obituaries for everyone in town; she introduces boyfriend Holden to Houdini, Poe, Rimbaud, Lovecraft, and Ambrose Bierce; plays him indie-rock music and shortwave broadcasts of mysterious counting voices; sends him messages in code, mysterious phrases, puzzles, and maps. Much remains unexplained about her even as she makes The Spooky and Unexplained part of Holden's life. Where did her bruises come from? Why doesn't her father have eyebrows? What was Anna's involvement in the car crash of loutish alpha Goth, Bryce? Why doesn't she like Mr. Devon, Holden's favorite teacher? When Anna disappears, her dress neatly laid out beside a hole in an ice-covered river, even more questions arise. Why was there a condom wrapper under Anna's couch, when Holden knew he'd disposed of his? Is Anna dead? Is she sending him messages, or is that just wishful thinking? Are the messages from the other side, or just from another town? Where did Holden's drug-dealing best friend go for two weeks? Why did Mr. Devon lie about where he'smoving? Did the TV psychic really contact Anna? Who knows? And who cares? Like the puzzles and codes Anna sends, the questions either go unresolved, or if answered, lead nowhere. A pointless exercise that might work for the "I challenge you with my shocking style" YA crowd.
"This strange tale manages to creep under your skin, and to stay there for some time."—People
"The writing is compelling; the pace as swift as that water churning under the ice."—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
"A story about young love, suffused with mystery and magic . . . an absorbing read."—The Des Moines Register
"This rich, complex puzzle is the work of a talented author."—Publishers Weekly
"An intriguing debut."—School Library Journal
"Oddly mesmerizing . . . it's teasing foreshadowings and forbodings make it hard to forget."—Booklist
"Galloway does an excellent job of building suspense."—Library Journal
"One of the best books I've read in a long, long time."-Kaye Gibbons
When Anastasia, a gothic teenager with a passion for mind games, black clothes, codes, and writing the obituaries of the local townspeople, appears in a small town high school, she shakes up the blandest adolescent in town, the unnamed narrator, who falls in love with her. Then she disappears, leaving behind her black dress on the frozen river. The narrator plunges into the quest to find out if she still lives--in one form or another. Master storyteller Scott Brick captures the joy and angst of first love with innocent vulnerability, anger, and in the end, acceptance. A talented narrator gives voice to a noteworthy first novel. M.T.B. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169898095 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 06/26/2005 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
Good-bye to Everyone
Anna Cayne had moved here in August, just before our sophomore year in high school, but by February she had, one by one, killed everyone in town. She didn't do it all by herself—I helped with a few, including my best friend—but still, it was no small accomplishment, even if it was a small town.
She captured all of these lives and deaths in fourteen black-jacketed composition notebooks. By the time she has finished, there were more than 1,500 obituaries, on just under 2,800 handwritten pages. The lives she wrote about were real, all true, but the deaths were fictions she invented, an average of around eight a day. "I'm not predicting the future," she said, "but it's only a matter of time before everyone catches up to me."
She had known things about people, or had discovered them—the secrets and private information that showed up in her notebooks were things that people who had spent their entire lives in our town didn't know. The funny thing is, during the months when the bodies were piling up in the imagination of Anna Cayne, I don't think a single person actually died in town; it was the longest drought for the funeral home that anyone could remember.
The obituaries were private; her friends and a few other people knew that Anna was working on them, but besides me, I don't believe anyone else was allowed to read them. She must have started the project on her very first day in town, the day I saw her sitting on the front lawn of her new home, writing in one of her notebooks as the rest of us stood with her parents, watching their belongings parade from thelong yellow truck into the house. And after she had written the last page almost seven months later, she was gone.
Maybe.
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