Following Fake Man
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3.9 • 21 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Homer Aldrich Winthrop was a neurologist who died of a neurological illness. That’s all Homer Jr.’s mother will say about his father, who died when he was 2, and any prodding for details results in silence,
evasion, or sudden migraine headaches. So by age 12, Homer’s given up asking.
But on an unexpected trip to Maine, Homer finds himself in a place where his father had lived. In this one coastal village there must be millions of facts about his father. Now Homer must face his biggest fear–maybe there’s a reason his father is such a secret. Maybe there are things he really doesn’t want to know.
Still, Maine gives him courage. There’s something about the people he meets and the breadth of the sky that convince Homer to search for the truth–to solve the mystery of his own life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Using strong visual imagery and occasionally alternating points of view, Holmes (My Sister the Sausage Roll) adroitly conveys the discord in a household haunted by the past. Homer Winthrop, the principle narrator and a young artist, yearns to know about his father, who died when he was a baby. But Homer's mother, a linguist who "heard words instead of what a person was saying," ignores her son's questions. As the novel opens, she is driving Homer and their housekeeper, Madeleine, to the coastal town in Maine where her late husband lived his final years. As the boy roams the streets, he feels a vague sense of familiarity and determines to learn something about his own history. He becomes convinced that "Fake Man," a strange, middle-aged man who disguises himself as someone much older, may hold the key. The author ably evokes an elegiac mood and crystallizes the essence of the characters in a few well-defined strokes. Homer, for example, notes the essential difference between his mother and Madeleine simply by observing their hair: "I opened my eyes and stared at the back of my mother's head: a circle with a bun in the middle, all perfect and neat. I stared at the back of Madeleine's: a boingy-haired triangle sticking out to the tips of her shoulders. A bird could be living in there." Holmes draws a detailed, complex portrait of the young protagonist, who gradually breaks his own code of silence to participate fully in the world around him. Ages 10-up.
