A young prodigy keeps a journal of his family life, the records ending with the revelation of a tragic accident that silenced his writing for three years. The novel of 139 pages is filled with simple, everyday events as they happen in a conflict-free family, and with descriptions of a tight relationship between offspring and parents — until disaster strikes on the beach and the harmonious life comes to an abrupt end. The family, of American origin but with ties to Iranian and Brazilian heritage, lives on the seashore in Brazil. The father is a writer of fiction, the mother a piano-playing nurse, and their two small sons are touchingly loving. The younger brother has only one lung, is dyslexic, but has a special gift for the paranormal; the other is our narrator Ray, an eleven-year-old gifted child, turning fourteen in the last chapters.

Though the author tries hard to keep the language at the age level of the narrator (even makes him go through an IQ test at a Kansas University), considering the narrator's age, the prose remains implausible: clarity and logic behind his sentence-building are those of an adult, and so is his choice of words in many instances. No matter how smart he is, a child of eleven would not analyze concepts like "allusion" and "metaphor," would never use words like "immense capacity for belief," "his consciousness transcends slumber," or ponder over "the theorems of Isaac Newton." The poetic descriptions of the landscape, the ruminations over religion and love between brothers — all this hard to believe. Moreover, only an adult author would be able to deal with foreshadowing, a necessary literary device to prevent readers from falling asleep; and yet, in an early chapter, Ray expertly plants a hint or two of a tragedy about to happen. The author's presence behind the props is obvious, his voice quite audible in a good number of pronouncements and expressions. That the young prodigy reads Shakespeare, Twain, Steinbeck, and Harper Lee is plausible enough, but to integrate the meaning of such books into his observations about life and people is not. These problems could have been easily solved by making the narrator at least eighteen.

About structure: A novel need not be chronologically linear, as long as the handling of time doesn't happen at the expense of clarity, as it does here. The frequent switches between the present and past tenses, plus the vague referrals to "several years ago," "a few years ago," "two years ago," kicks the reader out of time and place, and headfirst into chronological confusion (now the narrator is eleven, then seven, then eleven again, and so on). At the end you figure it all out, but it makes the reading cumbersome.

The dialogue (the little there is) could have been tightened by eliminating "he said" and "I said" when it is quite clear who is speaking.

The characters are lovingly drawn, all extremely good and nice. In this perfect family, you never hear a raised voice, never see an ounce of impatience, as if the members were all angels. And this leads me to the suspicion — which kept growing while reading the book — that what we have here is a kind of subtle promotion of the Bahá'í faith. (I emphasize the "subtle," since the author doesn't hammer it in.) The narrator informs us that his family belongs to the sect, and proves it, too, by telling us of its martyrs — again in an all-knowing fashion. There's nothing wrong with a faith which advocates peace and brotherhood, but promotion of religion doesn't belong in fiction.

The flaws discussed above are regrettable. The well-written story (even if unbelievably so), is handled with sensitivity, and childhood memories are always fascinating. The novel could have reached a higher literary level if the problems with the narrator, the chronology, and the abrupt switches of the tenses were fixed, and the religious implications omitted.

Bellwood Press, 2005: ISBN 0-87743-707-6