Book: The House on Salt Hay Road by Carin Clevidence

I loved this novel, which is set in rural Long Island from about 1935 to 1945. It is a family story and beautifully told. Two young children whose parents have died are taken in by their aunt, uncle and grandfather and they grow up in the house on Salt Hay Road. All of the characters are beautifully drawn and very credible. One also feels the sea and salty air and the sense of a young boy's freedom as he roams the fields and marshes and beaches that permeates this book. There is also a wonderful nostalgia for people of my generation. It is a time before computers and cell phones and yet not too far removed.

Since I usually read the reviews on the back of books, I thought I would like this story when I read what Annie Dillard said: 'I'd like to see this book return literature to its roots in beauty. Not sentimental, Clevidence has a keen eye for the loneliness of what is real, and for the energy of what is exultant, the white birds rising from the marsh."

Quoting at random:
"Mavis sniffled as she passed Clayton a slice of bread. He smeared it with cream lifted from the top of the milk jug with the flat of the butter knife. The cream was yellow with fat, thick as leather. Clayton sprinkled sugar over it and then crammed the slice into his mouth. The grains of sugar pressed against his tongue."

Clayton is a young boy; Mavis is his older matronly aunt who has returned to the Salt Hay Road house years earlier after a bad marriage. She bakes and cleans and generally keeps house for her father, her brother and for Nancy and Clayton, her orphaned niece and nephew. Her character made me think of my grandmothers in their homes that were always clean and always smelled of good food.

I also liked the way this story was told. The author jumped into these lives and carried us along and then left them, but without a sense of abandonment....rather with a sense that there will be more life for the characters, and that they have been brought through important events in all their lives and now will persevere.