I heard that you will forget some books after reading them, but some books will follow you for the rest of your life like the scar on your knee when you were a child. Boy’s Life is the latter. It gives you a punch in the gut at the beginning: a little boy, Cory Mackenson, followed the milk delivery father out before dawn, and saw a car plunge into the lake with his own eyes. The people in the car were chained and drowned alive. This is not an adult detective drama. This is a murder seen in the eyes of a twelve-year-old child. Do you think it’s just a suspense novel? No, it is also telling you — look, how fun it is to catch fireflies in summer, how great it is to play rugby in autumn, and how crazy it is to have a snowball fight in winter.
The murder case and the childhood incident were sewn on the same piece of cloth, and you grew up trembling with Cory.
Death and butterfly net, suspense and growth hand in hand
There are two threads in the book, one is black and shiny, and the other is warm and hot.
The black one is a murder: the secret of the car at the bottom of the lake hooked Cory like a hook. He couldn’t help turning through those corners that shouldn’t be turned over — abandoned huts, dusty files, fears and lies hidden by adults. The more you dig down, the darker it gets. It’s so dark that you wonder if the world can be saved.
The warm one is his daily life:He took care of a dog named Rebel – his loyal friend, rode a bicycle called Rocket and felt that he could fly to the sky. He chatted with the strange mother-in-law called The Witch in the town and found that she was gentler than anyone else. That line is so warm that you want to get in and live.
These two lines are entangled from beginning to end. You won’t feel that jumping around is a mess, but you will feel that this is called living. Weren’t you like this when you were a child? One second I was afraid of the ghost under the bed, but the next second I laughed out loud. The hole in my heart and the candy in my hand have never existed at the same time.
This book doesn’t force you to choose whether to chase the murderer or catch the bug. It tells you: both, this is growing up. If you want to take that hole, you also have to grab that candy.
This town will breathe
What really makes me plunge into it and can’t get out is not the plot, but the “smell” of Zephyr Town itself. What Robert R. McCammon wrote was not a perfect fake town, but a place you would want to move in — even if you knew there was a murder there.
There are all kinds of people in the town: Cory’s father, a good man who is a good man, but he is overwhelmed by fear. You can see all the fathers who have been beaten down by life in him; there are lonely but kind old men, and there are naughty but bad friends who don’t lose the chain at critical moments. Everyone is crowded together with fireworks, good and bad, just like the street where you really live in reality.
There are also some “little magic” in the book — talking puppies, flying bicycles, and witches that make people feel mysterious. These things are not childish fantasies, but filters in the eyes of teenagers. This is what a child should look at the world: murder is cruel and human nature is struggling, but with this filter, they will not freeze you. This book makes you feel that even in the darkest corner, you can grow something warm. Just like the room with lights on in the snow in winter, you know that someone is waiting for you inside.
This book is an invitation I wrote to you
We have all stood on the edge of the crack between childhood and adult world and were frightened, but we couldn’t turn around and run away. Some people choose to forget that moment, some people pretend not to see it, and some people simply live themselves as the kind of adult they were afraid of at the beginning. But this book does one thing: let you focus on the smell of a summer evening, smell the dry aroma after the grass is exposed to the sun, and hear the barking of dogs in the distance and the sound of your mother calling you home. Then, it gently tells you — you see, the world is dirty, dark, and has evil that you can’t imagine, but you can still love it.
It’s not because evil doesn’t exist, but because you still remember that summer. Because you have friends, Rocket, and a self who is willing to accompany dad to deliver milk in the early morning. McCammon is not writing a novel. He is giving you a hug and a map to go home in your pocket by the way. The map doesn’t draw the road, but the self you forgot.
Open it. You will meet Cory, meet the dog called Rebel, meet the strange mother-in-law who dares to call you “little ghost”, and meet your own childhood. And when you close the book, you may be stunned for a moment, and then silently say to yourself: Well, the child is still there. He didn’t get lost. He was just waiting for you to find him.
