#crazy jack

Author: Donna Jo Napoli.

Publication Date: 1999.

Genre: Fantasy YA.

Premise: Jack, the nine-year-old son of peasant farmers in England circa 1500, leads a modest but happy existence, until a series of natural disasters and ill-timed investments plunge his family into poverty and ruin. Maddened by guilt and desperation, Jack’s father ran to a nearby cliff, and most say that he jumped to his death. Not Jack, though; he firmly believes that he saw his father vanish into thin air. Yet he feels guilty for not being able to stop him. Seven years later, he’s considered “crazy” by the rest of the village, due to yearly weeks-long episodes where he obsessively throws himself at the cliff face and stops caring much about sleeping indoors or tending to injuries. Things are pretty bad, until he meets a man with some magic beans that may answer some of his questions. 

Thoughts: Donna Jo Napoli has written some absolutely brilliant fairy tale/folklore retellings (Breath, The Wager, The Magic Circle), some solid but less exciting ones (Beast, Zel), and some interesting but not completely successful ones (Bound, Spinners, Storm). Crazy Jack is a superior example of the third category; the good parts are great, and the bad parts simply don’t quite work. Napoli excels when Jack is on earth. His family’s descent, brought on by two or three misfortunes in a society with practically no safety net, is devastatingly rendered. The self-destruction that he faithfully repeats every year is affecting and all too relatable; he knows he should move on, both for his own sake and that of his loved ones, but he can’t stop picking at the wound. Best of all is his relationship with Flora, a long-time friend who genuinely loves him but fears what being with him would do to her already-precarious status as one of the few people of North African descent in the village. Napoli takes Flora’s dilemma as seriously as Jack’s, and it’s wonderful to watch them work out how to be together. The way magic works on earth is also delightfully concrete and practical; my favorite magical object is the bottomless bucket of stones that seem to fit whatever purpose the owner has in mind.

Things get shakier up in the sky. The giant has a cool backstory, but mostly he just tromps around like you’d expect. His wife is...well, she’s sexy, and Jack clearly wants to bang her, although he never quite comes out and says it. They sort of have a PG-13 Blue Velvet thing, but that makes it sound more interesting than it is. There’s often some surprisingly frank sexuality in Napoli--the psychedelic orgy in Breath, the lion-sex in Beast, the scene in Storm where Ham’s wife asks some bonobos for marital advice--but it usually feels more textured and specific than this. To be fair, you don’t get much more specific than a Biblical character treating a bonobo like Dr. Ruth.

The room was dimly lit. Heaps of metal and unidentifiable materials laid about in an almost organized manner. Edgar walked through the mess mostly on his way to Jack, but spying on all of Jack’s projects. Some areas, more put-together than others. Some areas in the clean up stage.. 

Jack sat at his computer watching the news on one screen and dozens of other news outlets on the others. 

‘There is still massive clean up.... Police have no...’

He had a lot of projects lately. He seemed a lot off lately. His eyes seem a lot icier lately. 

‘We are getting word there was another...’

Edgar had been around him long enough to notice some repeats in Jacks projects. Projectile things. Explosive things. Sensitive things. Harmful things. 

‘Everything is gone.... Little chance of surviv...’

Edgar finally made his way to Jack, standing just behind to peek at the news. “They’ve been covering this sheet all day.” He whined, in hopes Jack would actually come hang out this time. “I’m sure it’ll be on at any bar.”

Jack closed out of online news room and opened another. “Not tonight, Edgar. Things are blowing up. Should stay put...” 

Edgar rolled his eyes and huffed. “Yeah, well, it ain’t here.” He was about to ghost his way out when a picture of one of the buildings caught his eye. “Didn’t we go walk around that building last week?” The browser quickly closed.

“....jack?”

No one moved. 

“Jack. You had me ghost inside....”

Edgar looked around the room. “You’re fucking with me, right?”

Jack slumped back into his chair with a small sigh, not of trouble but relief.

‘Do I have an over active imagination? Or am I slowly becoming more.. perceptive?’ 

Dust filtered through the single light from the ceiling. Shining all too brightly on the empty table. He had noticed he was spending more time in a sleep like state. But while his body felt the weakness, his mind was lite on fire. More knowledge, more information, so much MORE and it was delicious. Delectable. Tangible. Smells were stronger like his nose had been replaced with.. but he was sure it was only a dream. He would see people walk through walls and say things he almost understood, things would happen that shouldn’t or didn’t? But upon trying to investigate, they would disappear and he would be shuttled to a more quiet area. 

He checked to make sure there was no hallucinations, new mental decay or that he was indeed, awake. He was awake, every time. Even when his body was still in bed.

‘I heard a man talk about a physics model I had never heard of. It doesn't make any sense. The model implies gravity is not common, but something that only happens sometimes...’

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‘..It works...’

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