English writer Paddy Crewe explores the South with a character who doesn't need to speak to be heard.
My Name is Yip by Paddy Crewe. Harry N. Abrams. pp.368. $28.
Paddy Crewe's debut novel, My name is Yip, is very much like its namesake: not at all what it immediately appears to be. The protagonist, Yip Tolroy, is born nearly dead, his father flees at the sight of him and never comes back. By the time he’s fourteen years old, his height's barely broken four feet—his entire body is pale and hairless. On top of that, he’s completely mute; not a laugh or a cry. What he can do, though, is write.
And after years of isolating silence, the first sentence he writes is: “My name is Yip Tolroy & I am mute.” The man who gives Yip the chalk and slate to write on is a certain Shelby Stubbs—a retired doctor. But aside from him, there’s no one really in the small town of Heron’s Creek, Georgia who manages to see the complex, thoughtful person Yip really is.
If it’s still difficult to be “different” in these enlightened times, it was surely all the more difficult in the 1850s—especially with the all-too-rigid definition of normal. Carson McCullers’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter comes to mind with its treatment of deaf-mute characters (John and Spiros) and the search for companionship. Both novels set their characters apart from “the masses”—the other characters who fit in easily—and show “the outsiders” (Yip, John, Spiros) as more human (and more humane) and emotionally mature than their peers.
In Yip’s case, his mother—who runs Tolroy’s Store, the town’s general store, all on her own—doesn’t have the time or emotional energy to engage with her son. And the other kids are a bunch of typical bullies, altogether unforgiving. Yip, though, takes this in stride and is not overly hurt. He keeps to himself and is happy to do so; they never really interested him in the first place. His life is quiet and simple. He sits on a three-legged stool under a tree, and watches the world go by.
One fateful night, though, Yip goes riding off on his faithful horse Gussie after a mysterious trio of men marching into the woods, and everything goes spinning out of control. First comes the thrilling discovery of gold in the river—then a grisly murder as things only get worse. When he is rescued from drowning by Dud Carter, Yip finds a friend in the same situation, but the two soon escape the town following Yip killing a stranger in a drunken tousle. Then an escaped slave, a traveling freak show, and a quest for revenge for the death of Yip’s absent father keep the pace fast up until the very end.
Paddy Crewe’s debut novel is strong in many ways. The extraordinary use of language is first and foremost. The book is stirringly written, and make no mistake, it is written. Yip, as our narrator, makes it explicit early on that he is actively writing this from a future time and place. This both justifies the highly refined and thoughtful—and very much dialectic to 1850s Georgia—style and undercuts any tension about whatever mortal peril Yip might (and does) find himself in over the course of the story (obviously he survives). Though the style may not be for everyone, it worked well at propelling the narrative forward and making the story memorable and unique.
But there are some weaknesses in style, too. Throughout, a good deal of “as you will soon find out” occurs in the book. That is to say, the narrator often foreshadows plot events by telling you things like: “And I will tell you now our paths did cross again & it was then I discovered she was no more a ghost than a fish is a bird” or “you would not have knowed Great Evil was brewing & soon the dirt would run red with Innocent Blood” or “How we then did need an old wise head to set us straight.” This comes across as somewhat insecure on the part of the author, and also somewhat infantilizing of the reader.
To many, the book will feel like something of a mutation of Huckleberry Finn or Of Mice and Men, a jaunt through old Americana with well-expressed characters and interesting events—albeit with a darker twist every now and then. Things build up well enough—the arc is very character-driven (for the most part), and the characters are deeply compelling—however the ending comes almost entirely out of nowhere and feels almost entirely pointless. It doesn’t really seem to be the ending that the narrative was working up to. It has been said that “art is a gap in the ordinary,” and this is therefore certainly art in that ordinarily one would complete this beautifully-written text feeling like it had really managed to say something—but it’s not altogether clear that it was even trying to.
All things considered, My Name is Yip is still an enjoyable read. When Crewe’s in the thick middle of the plot as opposed to the ending, the writing sparkles and his character-work is perhaps second to none. I found myself strongly bonded to Yip and the dear friends he manages to make in spite of his situation, and, at the very least, those are feelings worth enjoying. There’s something to be said about a journey where being voiceless doesn’t hold one back. For all his muteness, Yip speaks volumes, finally finding the connections he longed for and adding something a little bit different to the canon of Southern literature.
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