TUCK EVERLASTING

I picked this Natalie Babbitt novel for book group, because I caught part of the movie on TV one afternoon (although as an adaptation it’s flawed, inaccurately superimposing a whole teen romance into the mix, I am a softie for Alexis Bledel and also John Hurt) and suddenly remembered what a huge impression the book made on me in fourth grade or so. I couldn’t recall much of the plot, just that it struck me as one of the most profound things I’d ever read. Upon rereading as an adult, I was surprised by how short and simple the story really is (it almost feels more like a fable than a novel), but I can still see why it blew my mind. Even though I’ve read and watched enough media that the concept of immortality being a curse and not a blessing now seems like an old-hat trope, this was probably one of the first really philosophical books I read and almost certainly the first to explicitly confront the concepts of time and death. Regrettably, I can’t recapture the experience of reading it with a young and impressionable mind, but I still enjoyed the meditative tone and beautiful writing. (“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.”)