Fable-like story about a man who lives on an island where everything is always orderly and neat. (It initially reminded me of that neighborhood on Camazotz in A Wrinkle in Time). Dave goes to work, does what’s expected of him (though he doesn’t really know what his company does), comes home and sits in front of the window sketching things he sees outside. One day he suddenly starts growing a beard- and not any beard. This one takes over his face in a matter of minutes, while he’s in a meeting! He goes to see doctors, who have no answers. He tries to control it by trimming but it grows back even faster. He gets fired for not meeting the tidy dress code (no facial hair allowed) and then sits at home overwhelmed by the beard. Which grows out the window and starts to overtake the neighborhood. Attracting a lot of gawkers, and getting him on the news (even though the man who interviewed him for research said there would be “no publicity” but there was: publicity galore). So in the end SPOILERS the government does something to get rid of the problem his huge beard causes- and this also gets rid of Dave. Who ends up out over the ocean. Away from this island across the ocean is wild tangle of darkness no-one dares approach. Apparently Dave’s unruly beard allowed people on the island leave to express their own bits of untidiness or go against the norm, and now things are different there. And sketches drift in from the ocean time to time, suggesting that Dave is still out there . . . but they dissolve into blackness over time, which is disturbing.
I didn’t know what to make of this book. I was intrigued in the beginning, and then wondered what would happen to Dave, how the beard problem would get resolved, but I didn’t like not knowing where he ended up. Was he happy? frightened? He was so passive about his life before, and gave up quickly on controlling the beard, so I wanted to know if he was still so apathetic after flying out over the ocean. Did escaping the island change things for him.
It reminded me so much of that book The Mysteries, another one that left me rather dissatisfied. The tone more than anything.
Borrowed from the public library.
