Behind the Moon

March 27, 2017
In Bell’s latest novel, a girl named Julie, fleeing from a violent sexual encounter in the desert, tumbles into a cave and falls into a fever dream inspired by ancient drawings on the cave walls. The telling of what happens next is shared among the characters. Jamal, the immigrant boy who feels responsible, leads the authorities to Julie’s body, then watches over her like a hawk lest the violent Marko, Julie’s nemesis, gets too close. Julie lies unresponsive in a hospital bed, somewhere “behind the moon,” but the reader participates in her hallucinatory journey, experiencing her turning into a bear, befriending a hawk, walking among the ancients, and becoming her own mother. In the real world, Julie’s birth mother, Marissa, on a spiritual journey of her own, begins searching for Julie, forging an alliance with a native shaman named Ultimo. The sections of the book grounded in reality are riveting, drawing the reader swiftly through the story, the author giving no assurance that any of the characters will live to see the last page. Julie’s journey through the spirit world is more difficult to follow, alluring but threatening to blur together. Nonetheless, it doesn’t diminish this powerful, mind-bending work.

Starred review from April 15, 2017

This latest from National Book Award finalist Bell (after Zig Zag Wanderer) is the story of an illicit teenage camping trip gone awry. Julie and Karyn are supposed to be having a sleepover but are instead on an adventure with Jamal, Marlo, and Sonny. They are in the desert near a large rock outcropping featuring petroglyphs and a narrow cave opening. Under the influence of a mistakenly ingested drug, Julie escapes the unwanted advances of Marlo by retreating, with Jamal's help, into the relative safety of the cave. The story proceeds through a number of alternative retellings. Woven throughout are dreamlike passages involving Paleolithic peoples and totemic animal spirits. Next we meet Julie's birth mother, Marissa, who has come back to the hospital where Julie was born, coincidentally finding her daughter there in a coma after her ordeal in the desert. The last section focuses on Marissa's experiences working with Jamal and a Native American outlaw named Ultimo to unravel the mystery of the cave. VERDICT Multiple versions and perspectives are pervasive and illustrate the dream space and the story, culminating in a perfect matchup of beginning and ending. Highly recommended for readers who can accept a number of coexisting realities.--Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2017
Bell, acclaimed for his historical Haitian trilogy and such unnerving novels as The Color of Night (2011), has long been fascinated by altered states and mystical forces. In this mind-twisting drama, teens Julie, Karyn, and Jamal, whose family has fled war in the Middle East, skip school and venture out into the Badlands with two older guys. When their partying turns sexually violent, Julie flees, plunges into a cave, and falls into a coma. Soon after, an encounter with a Native American shaman induces social-worker Marissa to search for the daughter she gave up for adoption. Her quest turns perilous as it leads her to Jamal and the hospitalized cave girl. Bell, bewitching and incandescently imaginative, masterfully parallels Marissa and Jamal's heart-pounding encounters with mayhem and mystery with Julie's vivid dream state in which she finds herself in the prehistoric world of cave paintings and mastodon hunts. As he illuminates by firelight and fluorescent lamps the unbroken chain of human cruelty, spirituality, inventiveness, and love, Bell writes, Time was not straight like a spear, but round like the moon. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)