The Everlasting Story of Nory

Baker manages to perfectly encapsulate the mind of a nine year old in all its semi-logical, semi-nonsensical glory. Nory feels like a living, breathing child, as do her classmates and younger brother. A beautiful book.

Here's a challenge: write a book for adults about a 9-year old girl of medium intelligence who is happy, well-adjusted, and very creative, and make it interesting. This book is full of anecdotes in the stream-of-consciousness style of Nory, whose main problems are handling bad dreams, adjusting as an American child in an English school, missing her old best friends, and trying to figure out how to stop the bullying of one unfortunately scapegoated classmate. Baker tells Nory's stories as she tells them to herself, with the anachronisms that a creative young child would put in. It makes one wonder how life would have been different if we'd had better parenting.

How rare it is to find a novel that is simultaneously so sweet and so brilliant. It was also a reminder of the ways in which children are confronted with moral choices and challenges to their character in contexts and situations that most of us dismiss as insignificant ... or simply have forgotten. I found myself cheering for Nory more than once. I think a lot of people may not know how to take this episodic narrative written by an adult yet from a child's point of view -- that's because there never has been anything like it before.

Fans of Nicholson Baker will probably be disappointed to find that this book containss aboslutely nothing about sex! The Everlasting Story of Nory is more akin to Madeline than The Feramata, because it is a story about dreaming, wisdom and creativity in the world of 9 year old kids. The Everlasting Story of Nory is a refreshing reminder of how important it is to stay creative, young, and open minded. Baker documents the life of Eleanor (Nory) Winslow, a nine year old American girl who is spending a semester at an English school. Like most 9 year olds, Nory dreams of things that most adults are too jaded to consider-- like creating a museum of plastic sushi, or being a pop-up book engineer. As adults we may take ourselves too seriously, or trivialize the lives of children-- but Baker runs time in reverse and brings the adult reader back to fourth grade, to a land of run-on sentences and malapropisms, where the lives of insects and adventures of stuffed ! animals are more significant than politics or money or other phenomena that adults hold so close to their hearts. If there is a darker theme beneath this story, I haven't been able to find it. Rather, Nory is about the distinct flavor of happiness that disappears when we become teenagers and adults. Warning: this book may compell you to act like a 9 year old.

For those who remember the charm of Nicholson Baker's first two fictional novels The Mezzanine and Room Temperature, Everlasting Story of Nory brings back that innocent rambling charm. Told thru the eyes of his 9 year old daughter Mr. Baker takes us thru the amazing imaginary and real world of pre-teen life. In his rambling style he brought back many funny memories of the quirks of the social mannerisms of children. For those who were partially turned off by the sexually explicit Fermata and Vox, this is pure G rated fun. Also, don't forget to check out his recent book of essays "Lumber", which is a fun read until the last lumbering chapter!