The Astonishing Life of August March

February 15, 2020
An orphaned child searches for love in New York City in this debut novel by a writer and comedian. In the early 1930s, an actress gives birth to a son between acts of These Dreams We Cherish in the Scarsenguard Theater and promptly abandons him after the show. The infant is discovered by the laundress, Eugenia Butler, who hides him backstage and becomes something of a surrogate mother, though she only cares for him while she's at work and gives him champagne as his first food. "That the boy survived his infancy was perhaps the greatest miracle in his miraculous life," we're told. Indeed. After almost a year, Miss Butler names the boy August March, and the child remains unknown to all the theater's inhabitants except one actor, Sir Reginald Percyfoot. In 1945, August is left to survive on his own after Miss Butler dies, Percyfoot refuses to take him in, and the Scarsenguard is demolished to make way for a hotel; he becomes a street thief to survive. He is finally located by Percyfoot, who tells him he's inherited Miss Butler's five-story brownstone (which raises the question of why she was willing share her home after her death but not in life), but then Percyfoot promptly sends the never-schooled August off to boarding school. Though August offers rich soliloquies, having grown up seeing all manner of plays, he has difficulty adapting to the expectations of formal schooling, though he thrives when offered a chance to direct the school's plays. August still lacks purpose or family, however, and after graduation, he returns to running cons with the help of a girl he's fallen in love with, who is only dimly capable of returning his affections. If you can suspend your disbelief long enough to buy the book's setup, the characters' lack of interiority and weak or absent motives make it difficult to engage with the story, which seems to exist in a slightly alternate world but one strangely without charm. One of three things often keep a reader interested in a book: its world, characters, or ideas. Though Jackson's prose is nimble and clever, his novel can't quite decide what it's interested in, so neither can we. A lightly told but incomplete story.

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February 15, 2020
In this wry and hilarious farce, readers meet August March, a boy born to a famous stage actress and abandoned in her dressing room minutes after exiting the womb. August is raised by Eugenia Butler, the senile seamstress at the theater where he was found. It never occurs to Eugenia to bring August home, so he spends his childhood in the theater's rafters and far reaches. August is reasonably unmoored when the theater is razed by a rich hotel magnate. The theater is the only world he's ever known. Then his aging caregiver passes away, and August wonders how he will possibly survive. He is saved by Sir Reginald Percyfoot, a British actor who pseudo-adopts him, sends him to boarding school, and launches him into adulthood. As a young man, August relishes a sweeping con and even finds a lover who shares his passion for swindling. In their final ruse as a duo, August attempts to scam the rich hotel magnate who leveled his world in the first place. Irreverent, bizarre, and a roiling good time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)