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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Where oh where did my little boy go, 20 Mar 2003
The boy that Meg put on the school bus this Vermont morning was her asthmatic 8-year-old son, Charlie. The boy who comes home in the afternoon is not. Sure, he almost looks like Charlie, almost acts like Charlie, almost knows the things Charlie should know, but not quite. As Meg sits on the bus studying this boy, the bus driver, Sandy, tells her, "We looked back out the window and there you were, reappearing at the front door when you had been standing there only a second ago." The sheriff arrives, with questions. Meg's partner, Jeff, is summoned from his job in Toronto. Meg's daughter, Katie, a 13-year-old very full of herself, is retrieved from boarding school. The boy is taken to Charlie's doctor for tests, where it's discovered he no longer has asthma. He's taller, stronger, more adventurous. Everyone asks the same question: Is this Charlie? And no one knows.Because the book jacket made the mistake of calling THE BOY ON THE BUS a mystery, I expected a different sort of ending and was disappointed by the lack of resolution. Had Schupack used Meg's identity crisis to resolve the questions, I would have been satisfied, but as it was I enjoyed every moment up until the last several pages, then felt cheated. Still, this little novel is an excellent psychological portrait of a family in limbo. All of the characters except Charlie are well drawn (Charlie comes across as shadowy at best, but perhaps that's intended), the prose is beautiful and descriptive, the dialogue realistic, and the resulting impression very surreal. Although at times I had trouble with the plot -- if my kid came home in Charlie's condition I'd be screaming for conclusive evidence -- I also appreciated the fact that Schupack didn't turn this story into a thriller but instead kept the search very much inside the family's heads. Even as Meg no longer knows her own son, she finds herself a stranger to her partner and daughter as well. And even herself. Although certainly not a mystery as claimed, THE BOY ON THE BUS is a clever and expertly crafted search for identity and can be appreciated as such. Anna Klein
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