Dust by Mark Thompson: A Loving Portrait of Boyhood Friendship

"Early in life, my grandfather told me that only three things were certain: birth, death and time. And time only ticked one way: it went forward and never back. It came to be a recurring wish with me, the desire to turn back the clock, to undo what I had done." from Dust by Mark Thompson

For as long as I can remember, part of me has faced backward, tied to the past by nostalgia and longing. When I read Maria Rainer Rilke's advice in his Letters to a Young Poet that one's childhood "treasure house of memories"* offers the creative artist a wealth of inspiration I knew it was true.

I share this to explain why I so enjoy writing that is turned backwards, considering a childhood's treasure house. The newness, the first contact, the adventure of life--and its sorrows and disappointments and questions--always has a poignancy for me.

Mark Thompson's slim debut novel Dust  is about the friendship and adventures of two eleven-year-old boys growing up in New Jersey in the late 1960s. It is full of lyrical nostalgia as J. J. Walsh recounts his last summer with his best friend Tony 'El Greco' Papadakis.

The boys still imagine sticks are swords, but they also sneak Kent cigarettes and drink coffee black. They imagine the larger world, planning a trip to see the Pacific Ocean. In a freedom rarely allowed today, the boys get into trouble and have misadventures, and they come to terms with death and pursue knowledge of sex. Details of American life offer a deep sense of time and place.

Near the end of summer, Mr. Walsh takes the boys to see his hometown of Savannah, GA, whose exotic beauty enchants JJ. During their travels, the boys experience the Jim Crow South with its poverty and division.

Dust is a love song to the endurance of love, love of a boyhood friend, a wife, a son.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Dust
Mark Thompson
RedDoor Publishing
ISBN: 9781910453223




*"For the creative artist there is no poverty—nothing is insignificant or unimportant. Even if you were in a prison whose walls would shut out from your senses the sounds of the outer world, would you not then still have your childhood, this precious wealth, this treasure house of memories? Direct your attention to that. Attempt to resurrect these sunken sensations of a distant past."