For Henry, the likable 13-year-old narrator of Joyce Maynard's moving new novel, Labor Day weekend is shaping up like the rest of his lonely summer with nothing to do except watch television, play with his hamster and fantasize about his female classmates … It is a testament to Maynard's skill that she makes this ominous setup into a convincing and poignant coming-of-age tale. As she has revealed in her memoirs and five previous novels, Maynard has had her own share of unsuitable attachments (including an intense pen pal relationship with a convicted murderer). She understands the deep yearnings that drive people to impulsive decisions and sometimes reckless behavior.
Reduced to its broad outlines, Labor Day can't help sounding a little ridiculous: a goofy mash-up of Mary Poppins, The Bridges of Madison County and Cape Fear, minus the fear. But there is a lot more to it than that. Like all the fiction Joyce Maynard has written, her new novel may lack many of the literary qualities thought necessary to create a convincing illusion, yet it will not be dismissed. It insists on having its say … Backed up by [Maynard’s] autobiographical information, Labor Day begins to make much more sense. It too is haunted by impossible fantasies of a happy home. And it too features a scarred adult who looks back on the ruin of his childhood in an attempt to make some sense of it. Its best moments come straight from real life.
Maynard is masterful at the offhand details that reveal three people at their wits' ends. Frank, on the lam, offers to buy Henry a puzzle book but needs to give him an IOU ‘since at the moment his funds were limited.’ Adele pours a gallon of milk on the floor after being grilled by a social worker about child custody. ‘It was like she was missing the outer layer of skin that allows people to get through the day without bleeding all the time,’ observes Henry's father about his ex-wife. ‘The world got to be too much for her.’ But the novel's most convincing voice is Henry, poised between little boy and mouthy teen. Wise and wide-eyed and forthright, he's Holden Caulfield without the edge, and the pleasure of this novel comes from listening to his narrative take on what he sees.
Labor works best as a coming-of-age tale about Henry. Maynard writes from the point of view of the angsty adolescent, and compellingly so. Henry navigates his parents' divorce, his father's new family and his own fumbling attempts at romance. Labor also succeeds thanks to its tight timeline. It unravels in a fast-forwarded ending that ultimately wraps things up a little too neatly. Still, even with her contrived collision of characters, Maynard offers fresh insight into what constitutes family.
It is hard to wrap one's mind around the concept that an escaped convict holing up in your home and tying you to a chair is a good thing. Even as Frank bakes them a pie, even as he plays catch with Henry and teaches him to throw a baseball properly, even as Adele and Frank fall in love, there's an underlying sense of menace … The novel is an extended meditation on the nature of love, grief and loneliness. As Adele and Frank gradually reveal the blows that life has dealt them, Henry struggles in the jaws of puberty to think straight and decide what really matters. Maynard has created an ensemble of characters that will sneak into your heart, and warm it while it breaks.
Labor Day is about the power of love and sacrifice, and about how what appears to be the right thing can be the wrong thing, and vice versa … The reader becomes fond of all three characters, especially Frank, who is endlessly kind. But he's also hard to picture. In fact, the whole story is hard to swallow. Another problem: Henry's voice comes across not as that of a boy, but as that of a middle-aged woman ... much like Joyce Maynard. Still, this is a sweet, romantic story, and if you're in a wistful mood, it will sit well with you.
Labor Day, narrated by Henry, is suffused with tenderness, dreaminess and love. It is tender even toward its villain — not the convict, but an anorexic teenage girl Henry meets in the library. But is tenderest toward Adele, the mom, a one-time dancer who looks like Ginger on Gilligan's Island, a damaged woman hiding at the end of a dead-end street in a very small town … Labor Day is first and foremost a page-turner, and its momentum and brevity compensate for a couple of distractions along the way. For example, though I was moved by the depth of its compassion for Adele's losses — a stillborn baby and a divorce — I wondered if an adolescent boy could feel and know as much about them as Henry does. Supposedly he is telling the story from a distance of many years, but this older-and-wiser perspective surfaces rarely and feels like an abandoned premise or an afterthought.
A pubescent boy learns about sorrow and regret during one blisteringly hot holiday weekend … Narrated by the adult Henry 18 years later, the story shows how a boy digests, then uses the lessons learned that hot weekend. Redemption is eventually offered to all parties. Maynard expertly tugs heartstrings in a tidy tale.
