Beck by Mal Peet and Meg Rosoff

Abstract

Reviewed by: Beck by Mal Peet and Meg Rosoff Elizabeth Bush Peet, Mal Beck; by Mal Peet and Meg Rosoff. Candlewick, 2017 [272p] ISBN 978-0-7636-7842-5 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 10 up The illegitimate product of a one-night stand between his cash-strapped white mother and a black sailor in 1907 Liverpool, Beck is orphaned at eleven. He ends up at a Christian Brothers school in Ontario, where is he raped by one of the brothers, and he’s then shipped off to farm, whose owners overwork and under-feed him. Running away from the farm, he finds temporary respite with Bone, a black man who runs rum across the Canadian border into Detroit, and his woman Irma, who involve him in the illegal operation but also offer him a first glimpse of what a stable home and a loving relationship can look like. A deal gone deadly wrong, however, puts Beck back on the road headed toward Vancouver, only to be sidetracked by a prairie storm that ultimately leads him to Grace, a half-white, half-Blackfoot woman nearly twice his age. The two are undeniably attracted to each other and whether Beck and Grace can turn their sexual magnetism into a lifelong love becomes the focus of roughly the final third of this novel. Despite the intrinsic heat of the plotline, the book surveys Beck’s tribulations with a clinical eye. Some of the harshest episodes of Beck’s life are captured in passages of stunning grace, typical of the late Peet’s writing, but the cool distance between subject and reader makes empathy difficult to achieve. Readers familiar with both Peet and Rosoff may try to puzzle out whose work is whose, but with no solid hints in [End Page 376] closing notes from Rosoff and Peet’s wife, Elspeth, the pleasure of conjecture may be as satisfying as the tale itself. Copyright © 2017 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois