Far Far Away

Far Far Away
by Tom McNeal
New York: Alfred A. Knopf
2013
371 pages



Recently I read this book by Tom McNeal. It was voted one of YALSA's (Young Adult Library Services Association) Teen Top Ten books for 2014. On the back cover, I was promised this:

this is the strange and fateful tale of a boy, a girl, and an ancient ghost.

Ok, this book has my full attention! Strange and fateful tale? Ancient ghost?!

Jeremy Johnson Johnson is the anti-hero of our story. Why do I say anti-hero? Jeremy is a very shy teen who lives in an apartment above The Two Book Bookstore, the bookstore left by his grandfather that sold only two books, both volumes of his grandfather's biography. Jeremy's mother is gone, run away with a man she met at the local baker. His father is heartbroken and never comes out of his apartment, instead choosing to waste away in mourning, barely paying attention to what is going on with his son.

And Jeremy has problems. He is considered to be a strange young man, always talking to himself but no one talking to him. Except for a ghost.

The ghost, our narrator, is one of the parts of the story that I appreciated most. This is not a hair-raising ghost, but a protective ghost who has pledged to help Jeremy if he can. I hate to divulge the identity of the ghost, but he fits in nicely with fairy tale theme of the book.

The only human who regularly talks to Jeremy is Ginger Boultinghouse, a wild girl with wild hair and wild ideas.

Early in the story Ginger invites Jeremy to go with her to the bakery in town, the Green Oven Bakery, to have Prince Cake with her and her friends. Prince Cake is a specialty of the Swedish Baker, Mr. Blix, who only makes it occasionally and then signals the town with green smoke from his chimney. The Prince Cake has a local reputation and people half believed that whatever living thing you saw upon eating the first bite would steal your heart away. The only way to break the enchantment was by the touch of a salted tear upon the parted lips of the spellbound.

Prinsesstårta, or Prince Cake in our story, is a traditional Swedish cake
of light sponge, whipped cream, jam, and covered in a light green marzipan.

Jeremy has worries about Prince Cake, since rumours say that his mother ran away because of it.

Surviving his first trip to the bakery, Jeremy falls in with an impetuous plan of Ginger's. She, her two girl friends, and Jeremy break into the baker's home and play a big joke on him. This one simple, thoughtless act leads to the horror that is to follow, putting Jeremy and Ginger into severe danger that even his ghost friend has trouble getting him out of.

I mentioned earlier that this book has a fairy tale feel to it. The setting, a small town called Never Better, seems to be right out of a fairy tale, superficially a nice place to live until you dig around and find something nasty under a rock, including a lot of inexplicably missing children. Several of the characters seem straight out of stories, and our ghost, who I think is the true hero besides being narrator of the story, is definitely connected to fairy tales. It can be amusing to discover how many tales are alluded to in the book. Mr. Blix tells stories, the deputy tells and listens to stories, and even Jeremy's absent mother's only gifts to her son are actual stories in books.

The main plot of this book, however, revolves around a very well known tale, and one that turns strange and scary for our two main characters, Jeremy and Ginger.

I confess I had a very hard time putting this book down. I got so caught up with Jeremy and Ginger and the action of the story that I stayed up most of one night to keep reading. Tom McNeal is a truly a master storyteller about the mastery of stories.

Highly recommended for ages 13 and up.