Title: My Sunshine Away Author: M.O. Walsh
Published: February 10, 2015
Genre(s): Mystery/Thriller
Page Count: 320
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:My Sunshine Away unfolds in a Baton Rouge neighborhood best known for cookouts on sweltering summer afternoons, cauldrons of spicy crawfish, and passionate football fandom. But in the summer of 1989, when fifteen-year-old Lindy Simpson—free spirit, track star, and belle of the block—experiences a horrible crime late one evening near her home, it becomes apparent that this idyllic stretch of Southern suburbia has a dark side, too.
In My Sunshine Away, M.O. Walsh brilliantly juxtaposes the enchantment of a charmed childhood with the gripping story of a violent crime, unraveling families, and consuming adolescent love. Acutely wise and deeply honest, it is an astonishing and page-turning debut about the meaning of family, the power of memory, and our ability to forgive.
M.O. Walsh’s debut is at once a southern mystery and an intimate coming of age story, told by an unnamed narrator whose conversational tone gives the book movement and poignance. Because, though My Sunshine Away is about the rape of a 15-year-old girl, it’s also about a young man’s dealings with memory and love and guilt. This is an intricately wrought book, one that’s extremely well-done from nearly all angles, and, overall, I’m quite impressed by this novel.
The book, as I said, adopts a warm, confiding tone from the start. The narrator addresses “you” quite often, and there’s definitely the feeling that this man is sitting down to tell a story, to confess some past misdeeds. The narrator makes fairly frequent asides, as well, some that don’t pertain directly to the plot at hand—especially in the more action-filled scenes at the end where all the secrets in the narrator’s upper middle-class Baton Rouge neighborhood come to light. On one hand, I enjoy these segues and asides, because they add to the intimacy and naturalness of the narrative. On the other hand, when one is attempting to unravel a mystery in a gripping, forceful way, taking a trip down memory lane to talk about waiting for Santa on Christmas Eve might not be the best idea.
In general, I feel like My Sunshine Away was best in its beginning two-thirds. Walsh offers a complex, yet homey, view of this neighborhood and its inhabitants, and how Lindy Simpson’s rape is only the beginning of a long string of events that occurred over a period of a few years that, eventually, facilitated the narrator’s maturation. This narrator is never given a name, but his character is wonderfully detailed, nuanced, and authentic. He isn’t, strictly speaking, the most reliable or likeable of people, yet he doesn’t make excuses for himself, though he does attempt to portray himself in a mostly favorable light. The treatment of this character is interesting and complicated, and I think the author did an excellent job of both setting up the conclusion, and establishing the narrator whose actions in that conclusion would be so pivotal.
However, with all this promise, that conclusion didn’t impress. The emotional drama and intensity was cut by the narrator’s asides—they were fine in the beginning, but such a meandering style of storytelling wasn’t appropriate at the end, I felt. Moreover, the actual identity of Lindy’s rapist—the big question the reader has been asking since the first sentence of the book, was disappointing and unsatisfying. While, yes, this book is just as much about the narrator and his coming of age as it is Lindy’s story (perhaps more so), I felt like I’d been lead on for too many pages not to have a payoff of some sort in terms of the mystery plot. In spite of all its promise and initial success, My Sunshine Away didn’t live up to expectations in the end, with its underwhelming finale.
Even so, I still enjoyed this book very much. Walsh’s prose and characterization are phenomenal in their authenticity and nuance, and this was a very easy and enjoyable book to read, both riveting and contemplative in turn. My Sunshine Away is still, I think, a successful debut, one that accomplishes much with a very distinct, unique voice. Even nameless, Walsh’s narrator was very real to me, and I do not at all regret spending time listening to him tell this story.
