OSLO, MAINE :: Marcia Butler

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

The intense and vivid ensnaring of a pregnant moose sets in motion a chain of events that highlights Marcia Butler's shining character work in Oslo, Maine. Relationships are at the forefront in a town where news travels swiftly and secrets are hard kept. Husbands and wives, parents and children, neighbors and friends intertwine with the doomed moose, one of the novel's briefest but most poignant narrators.

Twelve-year-old Pierre Roy suffers severe memory loss following an encounter with the trapped moose. His injury puts additional stress on his parents, Claude and Celine, who now "fling synonyms at each other" over what kind of boy Pierre is. Man's man Claude, already eaten alive by Pierre's disturbing love of books ("They'd abducted his son with stealth and breathtaking speed from the day he'd started kindergarten"), becomes more despondent when Pierre finds solace in violin lessons and the crevasse between Claude and Celine widens.  

Neighbors Sandra and Jim, professional musicians, have issues and secrets of their own. Sandra is not only teaching Pierre but doing much of the housework while at Pierre's since Celine is adrift in a haze of drugs. The more Sandra helps, the closer things come to spinning out of everyone's control. Butler (Pickle's Progress) writes beautifully and with depth, each character mined for internal gems. Story is secondary, and while some plot arcs are dropped and the rest are tied up a bit too abruptly in an epilogue, the personalities that occupy Oslo, Maine are sufficiently intriguing to buoy this peculiarly engrossing tale.