Ocean in Iowa

This book looked to be a simple quick read. I picked it up after reading an excellent review in Entertainment Weekly. I found that is was incredibly vivid and indepth. A study in the way disfunction set in on young children, but yet it wasn't about that completely. As this story unfolded I found myself looking at a character who is the hero of his own life and when he can't be the hero of his mother's life he falls to pieces. I was blown away by how tender this book was, but I was even more impressed at how it was not heavy handed and full of tired generalizations. I give it an "A".

The simple, easy pace of AN OCEAN IN IOWA and the discretion Peter Hedges shows in revealing just enough are what make this book an absolute gem. While we are left to see the world of Scotty Ocean through his seven-year-old eyes, Hedges drops enough clues so that our more experienced eyes can pick out the many details that Scotty does not. This book is a must read for any child from a broken home as it handles its harsh subject with humor and immense amounts of understanding. Its one of those books that leaves you certain that all its characters really do exist, and what's more that you've met them all at some point in your own life.

Caitlin Cahalan March 4, 1999 Book Review Mrs. AndersonSeventh Heaven in "Iowa" An Ocean in Iowa by Peter Hedges ***** 5 stars This novel is a fantastic story about the life of one young boy and I recommend it to everyone. "Seven is going to be my year." That is what Scotty Ocean announced at the beginning of Peter Hedges' novel An Ocean in Iowa. Scotty wants to be seven more than anything else in the world and the novel takes us through all of the ups and downs of being seven. The story is told from Scotty's point of view and it offers us insight into the mind of an innocent, wide-eyed little boy. The novel takes us back to the late sixties, the days of the moon landing, A Family Affair, and Bonanza. The story centers on the Ocean family, a group of different personalities living in the same house in rural Iowa. Although the story is told from Scotty's point of view, we are able to take a look into the minds and hearts of the rest of the family: his father, the Judge; his mother, Joan; and his two older sisters, Claire and Maggie. We are taken through a year in the life of the Oceans which also happens to Scotty's seventh year. This year happens to be the year Joan decides to leave the family. Suddenly, the Ocean children are left to live with their loving yet distant father. As the story unfolds, we see the Judge becoming more open to his children. We also see a development in Scotty's character. Peter Hedges has written a beautiful character that will capture your hearts the minute you are introduced to him. Scotty is convinced that being seven means being a man. ("Seven is old enough to tie his own shoes.") His character goes from a six-year boy who, in Scotty's own opinion, drove his mother away to a seven-year old man who can handle anything. Hedges adds humor to the somewhat serious nature of this novel. The reader cannot help but smile when Scotty paints a nude portrait of himself or when he refuses to take off his Minnesota Vikings helmet. The novel is written with an amazing amount of style, yet there is a simplicity to it which keeps us turning the pages. Perhaps the novel is a reminder of what childhood was like and what thoughts ran through our heads. One would think a seven-year-old character is too simple and unimportant to write a novel about. However, Scotty's character has complex thoughts, emotions, and adult ideas and visions. Scotty refuses to turn eight and he is willing to go to drastic measures to prevent it from occurring. Hedges has included a theme throughout the novel that implies that you can only be young once. He is challenging us to look at ourselves now and telling us to enjoy what we have right at this moment. We cannot stay in one place forever but, once we leave, we will always have the memories to look back on. Just as Scotty Ocean cannot be seven forever, we can be sure that he will have plenty of memories of being seven. Maybe

Hedges' unpretentious prose brilliantly and effortlessly illuminates the Ocean family in elegant, endearing detail. Scotty and his lovingly abstract perceptions of his world are beautifully portrayed and we are left to understand Scotty's actions as we unconciously relate to our own childhood. "An Ocean In Iowa" is a resplendent, touching novel which perhaps shows that, when you're seven years old, one's methods of deciphering the world around oneself are often unconventional, but, just maybe, there is an understandable logic which transcends most adults attempts to survive the often oblique, difficult world that surrounds them. A timeless story of childhood innocence and confusion which manages to be concurrently both heartwarming and heartbreaking.

Young Scotty Ocean isn't quite sure what he means when he announces, before his seventh birthday, that seven will be his year. But from the beginning of An Ocean in Iowa, when novelist and playwright Peter Hedges establishes a tone of uneasy stillness and quiet disarray, the reader knows that the year won't be the one Scotty imagined.With stunning simplicity of language, Hedges, the author of What's Eating Gilbert Grape, crafts a story of a year in the life of the Ocean family -- Scotty; his two older sisters; his father, an inflexible and emotionally austere judge; and his mother, an alcoholic artist - and sets a stage that's authentic America in 1969. On television, "Father Knows Best" has evolved into the motherless, but equally idyllic, "Family Affair." The Salem girl puffs seductively through commercials. Apollo II is escaping the earth's atmosphere. And Vietnam has invaded not only America's living room, but its psyche. In West Glen, Iowa, Scotty is adoring his mother. He entertains her with his "seven dance," his "kissing machine." He gleefully clutches the stick shift in her car so they can shift gears together. He embraces the comfortable predictability of her excessive drinking, smoking and painting. Unbidden, he retrieves and opens her beer, crushes and hides the empties, cleans up the aftermath of her excesses. His diligence in "being good" is worth it, he knows, because it will keep her happy and loving him.But Scotty's goodness doesn't keep his mother from abandoning her family and her art to go wherever it is she's going. And he's sure it's all his fault. "If only I had done more of this, less of that, he thought. And he made a mental list, indelibly scrawling it onto his heart. If only he hadn't used the kissing machine on her all those times. If only he hadn't done the seven dance, or licked the mailbox, then maybe she'd have stayed." He decides to be even better.As his fa! ther and sisters cope in their own ways, Scotty becomes increasingly more desperate. When his expertly performed chores don't bring her home, he begins acting out at school. He cultivates a friendship with the older kid next door, the one with all the toys and gadgets who gives his sister the creeps. He tries to make a classmate's mother his own. He hides in his special place, hurts another child, threatens to destroy his family. Still, his absent mother wallows in alcoholic despair while his father, in increasingly grandiose attempts to maintain control, screamingly tiptoes around it.Hedges's masterful infusion of period details steeps the story in a time of societal changes that drastically affected the American family. With poignant clarity, he explores the impact, on child through adult, of mother's exit from the kitchen to "find herself" and fatherÕs entrance into the domestic arena. Of war's collision with family, and its smooth travels through commercialism. Of materialism, of rootlessness.He also eloquently examines the meaning, and the role in l