The Red Wheelbarrow Receives Kirkus Review!
Matthews’ novel tells the stories of two lives, mostly running in parallel but intersecting at key points.
Paul Rideau and Amy Barnes first connect briefly on a fall day in 1960 in Lisbon, Vermont, when he’s 9 and she’s 7. The Barnes family, from Hawaii, is visiting friends in the area. Then their lives diverge; he grows up on his family’s farm in Lisbon, while Amy, aside from a year in Connecticut, grows up in the Aloha State. In alternating sections following a nonlinear timeline spanning decades from 1960 to 2002, Matthews slowly reveals each character’s story. Paul marries his high school sweetheart, Sarah, and takes over the family farm, and theirs is a happy, busy life—with little room for Paul’s artistic interests. Amy is swept off her feet by Martin Whaley, a poet and faculty member at New Hampshire’s Stafford College; however, her creative writing is sublimated during their marriage, which is troubled. Throughout, Paul’s and Amy’s lives come close to connecting in various locations, including Chicago and Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Both experience milestones and painful events as their relationships with family members and friends develop and mature, and Paul and Amy’s love of artistic endeavors ends up changing both their lives. Overall, Matthews’ character-driven narrative sparkles with well-drawn protagonists and believable situations as Paul and Amy absorb society’s narrow expectations for men and women in the early ’60s. For example. Paul has an interest in art and color, but his father makes his opinion clear when his 9-year-old son is decorating Christmas cookies: “Coloring cookies when he could be out sledding? Seems pretty girly to me.” Tween Amy’s teacher tells her to cover up her body as much as possible in public: “you’ll be telling the boys you’re not the kind of girl who welcomes crude remarks and inappropriate attention.” In the end, this rewarding story successfully weaves disparate perspectives into a rich braid.
A satisfying story of love, family, and creativity.