[LISTENED TO: August 2018] Tuck Everlasting
Normally when we go on long car rides we listen to many audio books. This summer, we drove to Chicago (12 hours each way) and listened to only two! Two! And this one was only three discs long.
I actually didn’t know anything about this story when we started it (somehow this classic children’s book written during my childhood totally escaped me).
What’s fascinating about this story is how little there is to it. This is not a criticism. It’s a remarkably compact plot. Although there is an awful lot of description. And while Peter Thomas did a great job with the action of the story, the descriptions tended to drag on a bit (you could blame Babbitt or Thomas I suppose).
The story focuses on the Tuck family. Tuck, whose first name is a rarely used but is Angus, is the father. Mae is his wife. They have two children, Jesse who is 17 or so and Miles is 22 or so.
There is also Winnie Foster, a ten-year old girl. Her family is the oldest family in Treegap, New Hampshire.
The story opens with a lengthy description of Treegap. It’s lyrical and pretty, but when she returns to the descriptions later–amid the action, it’s a bit much.
Winnie is bored and is not given much freedom. Her family is pretty domineering to her and she resents them. She imagines running away.
Her reverie is halted by a man in a yellow suit. The man is very friendly (questionably so) and is interested in the property where they live.
It is hot (she winds up talking to a toad–there’s a lot of frogs and toads in this story). She finds a stream and is about to drink from it when she is stopped by Jesse Tuck. He dissuades her from drinking from the stream. Soon his mother and brother come along and when they see Winnie, they decide, rather impulsively, to take her home with them.
It’s kidnapping, yes. But they are also very kind to her. On the hurried horseback trip back to the Tuck residence, the man in the yellow suit sees them. She sees the man yet neither one acknowledges the other. But when Winnie tells them about the man, they grow nervous about her being seen.
It’s hard to talk about the story without stating the crux of the story, the magic of it. I may have been the only person who didn’t know what the story was about (especially since there was a film as well), but I’ll try to avoid stating it.
When they bring Winnie to their home, the Tucks explain why the grabbed her, and what they need her to know about where she lives. The Tucks had originally moved to Treegap, but when they discovered the stream, they realized that their lives would be changed forever.
They want to warn Winnie and her family about what happened to them. And over the next few chapters, the Tucks tell her about their experiences.
I had a hard time understanding why Tuck felt that Winnie wasn’t getting what he was saying. He reinforces several times his main pint. He genuinely believed that what he said was hard to grasp. And maybe it would be for a ten-year old, but I can’t imagine so.
Anyhow, the Tucks are very kind to her and despite some occasional misgivings, she enjoys spending time with them–their house is messy and relaxed (so unlike her own) and she loves it. Their food is sweet and delicious (she licks syrup off her fingers). They go fishing. And Jesse clearly thinks she’s pretty awesome (the age difference is big, but it is dealt with in a pleasing and not creepy way, which is hard to explain without giving anything away).
Angus also says that they will return her to her family in the morning–it’s not safe to ride at night.
Winnie’s family is freaked out, understandably–their daughter has been kidnapped. But we don’t hear about them all that much. Rather, we learn that the man in the yellow suit is aware of everything that has happened. He sees that they have Winnie, hears a bit of what they tell her and decides to capitalize on it. So he steals their horse and runs back to Winnie’s family saying that he knows where their daughter is.
They get the constable involved, he is kind of goofy character, hard to take seriously. But the man in the yellow suit has plans that are above the law. He is particularly angry about everything and his anger seems disproportionate until he reveals his actual connection to the Tuck family (this reveal was pretty great). He tells them that he has bargained with Winnie’s family for a shocking prize (this seems questionable on a legal status, frankly).
Then he reveals what he plans to do with his reward. The Tucks are outraged at his greed and in the scuffle, someone is killed.
The end of the story is pretty exciting with Winnie reuniting with her family. There is also an attempted jailbreak, and the constable becomes a rather large figure in the story.
The ending and epilogue are bittersweet. And yes there’s even more frogs and toads.
Overall, I enjoyed this book even if I felt it was a little slow at times. It felt very old-fashioned to me, so I wasn’t surprised to hear that it was nearly 50 years old. There were a number of things that a 21st century reader has a hard time buying, but things were simpler back then.
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