Sandy Hill
A Novel, by Ed Putnam
Authorhouse 2004
148 pages $15.00
"I am in this book, but Dan Perkins is not me. He resembles me and thinks like me sometimes, but he is not me, I didn't even know him at the beginning of writing this book, but I came to know him well and like him a lot by the time I had finished." Ed Putnam wrote in the introduction to his novel Sandy Hill
"It's hard to forget a place that molds you, shapes you, and casts you like a pot is baked in a kiln." Dan Perkins thinks while sitting on a park bench in the middle of his hometown of Sandy Hill. He has returned for his 45th high school reunion. He asks himself the question everyone asks, when they come back to the place of their childhood "God, what happened to this place?"
When one asks that question, are we asking what happen to ourselves? We no longer recognize or can identify who we were. We have memories, askew and somewhat obtuse at best from our youthful interpretations, but not an accurate representation. Putnam tries to answer this question by flashing back to the last vestiges of Dan's emotional innocence, to where he had been known as Danny during August 1950, a less than idyllic time where young Danny discovers a deep running sorrow that leaves a lifetime gulf between his family members. Putnam handles this short scene and the other coming of age scenes set in the 1950's with aplomb and skill like Bob Greene's memoir Be True To Your School and Tobias Wolff's memoir This Boy's Life. For example, "Danny climbed up on the front porch and sat for a few minutes in the wooden swing suspended from the ceiling. He loved to swing. Sometimes on hot summer evenings he and Aunt Martha would sit there together while she stripped peas or snipped the ends off string beans...Danny would help himself to a bean now and then, but mostly he just liked the feeling of sitting there swinging gently..."
Putnam claims that Sandy Hill is a work of fiction not a memoir. Sandy Hill shows some similarities to James Agee magnificent novel A Death in the Family and Stephen King's mastery in his novella The Body from his book of novellas Different Seasons. Putnam is able to capture seemingly authentic observations and realistically portrayed confusion within the youthful eyes of Danny and show a revelation through present day Dan. The next few lines that completes the above quoted passage demonstrates these mature observations, "...Aunt Martha had lived briefly in Louisiana before her husband had left her, and she liked to talk about her life there. They had a maid by the name of Lizzie, who did all the cooking and cleaning for them. It made Danny sad to think that Aunt Martha was now doing the same thing for his family, and he wondered if she ever though about that."
However, Putnam is not consistent with his writing specifically when he goes on an expositional tangent and tries to squeeze in thirty years of back story in only a few pages. He makes the mistake of "telling" the story instead of "showing". Sandy Hill would have been a better novel if Putnam had allowed himself the space and time to make it longer than its curt 148 pages. Also, some of the dialogue is unrealistic. The major problem with Sandy Hill is that the reader becomes frustrated with Putnam because there are parts that are so good that one cannot help but to devour the book. He writes with such passion and insight in sections, specifically two scenes that parallels and complements each other very well. One scene takes place during Dan's High School career that endangers his reputation and might follow him for life, and the other scene occurs in the present where his career as a School Administrator and his place as a citizen in his community is in jeopardy. Sandy Hill is written so well in parts that the bad writing stands out in areas and detracts, distracts and disappoints the reader. Putnam has written a decent novel that could have been a great novel
One can't help but look forward to Mr. Putnam's next book and wish that Sandy Hill will be revisited in the future
Ed Putnam lives with his wife of 38 years, Doreen, in Skaneateles in the Finger Lakes district of upstate New York. Putnam is a retired Episcopal Priest who has written for numerous journals and magazines and has a book on preaching which is in the process of being edited for publication and a new novel coming out.
Lee Gooden 11-24-2004
A Novel, by Ed Putnam
Authorhouse 2004
148 pages $15.00
"I am in this book, but Dan Perkins is not me. He resembles me and thinks like me sometimes, but he is not me, I didn't even know him at the beginning of writing this book, but I came to know him well and like him a lot by the time I had finished." Ed Putnam wrote in the introduction to his novel Sandy Hill
"It's hard to forget a place that molds you, shapes you, and casts you like a pot is baked in a kiln." Dan Perkins thinks while sitting on a park bench in the middle of his hometown of Sandy Hill. He has returned for his 45th high school reunion. He asks himself the question everyone asks, when they come back to the place of their childhood "God, what happened to this place?"
When one asks that question, are we asking what happen to ourselves? We no longer recognize or can identify who we were. We have memories, askew and somewhat obtuse at best from our youthful interpretations, but not an accurate representation. Putnam tries to answer this question by flashing back to the last vestiges of Dan's emotional innocence, to where he had been known as Danny during August 1950, a less than idyllic time where young Danny discovers a deep running sorrow that leaves a lifetime gulf between his family members. Putnam handles this short scene and the other coming of age scenes set in the 1950's with aplomb and skill like Bob Greene's memoir Be True To Your School and Tobias Wolff's memoir This Boy's Life. For example, "Danny climbed up on the front porch and sat for a few minutes in the wooden swing suspended from the ceiling. He loved to swing. Sometimes on hot summer evenings he and Aunt Martha would sit there together while she stripped peas or snipped the ends off string beans...Danny would help himself to a bean now and then, but mostly he just liked the feeling of sitting there swinging gently..."
Putnam claims that Sandy Hill is a work of fiction not a memoir. Sandy Hill shows some similarities to James Agee magnificent novel A Death in the Family and Stephen King's mastery in his novella The Body from his book of novellas Different Seasons. Putnam is able to capture seemingly authentic observations and realistically portrayed confusion within the youthful eyes of Danny and show a revelation through present day Dan. The next few lines that completes the above quoted passage demonstrates these mature observations, "...Aunt Martha had lived briefly in Louisiana before her husband had left her, and she liked to talk about her life there. They had a maid by the name of Lizzie, who did all the cooking and cleaning for them. It made Danny sad to think that Aunt Martha was now doing the same thing for his family, and he wondered if she ever though about that."
However, Putnam is not consistent with his writing specifically when he goes on an expositional tangent and tries to squeeze in thirty years of back story in only a few pages. He makes the mistake of "telling" the story instead of "showing". Sandy Hill would have been a better novel if Putnam had allowed himself the space and time to make it longer than its curt 148 pages. Also, some of the dialogue is unrealistic. The major problem with Sandy Hill is that the reader becomes frustrated with Putnam because there are parts that are so good that one cannot help but to devour the book. He writes with such passion and insight in sections, specifically two scenes that parallels and complements each other very well. One scene takes place during Dan's High School career that endangers his reputation and might follow him for life, and the other scene occurs in the present where his career as a School Administrator and his place as a citizen in his community is in jeopardy. Sandy Hill is written so well in parts that the bad writing stands out in areas and detracts, distracts and disappoints the reader. Putnam has written a decent novel that could have been a great novel
One can't help but look forward to Mr. Putnam's next book and wish that Sandy Hill will be revisited in the future
Ed Putnam lives with his wife of 38 years, Doreen, in Skaneateles in the Finger Lakes district of upstate New York. Putnam is a retired Episcopal Priest who has written for numerous journals and magazines and has a book on preaching which is in the process of being edited for publication and a new novel coming out.
Lee Gooden 11-24-2004
posted by Lee Gooden | 8:05 PM
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