Penpal

Content Warning: This section depicts child death.

Dathan Auerbach’s novel traces one character’s change in worldview as he gradually grows up to accept that the world is a cruel and cold place. Auerbach parallels his unnamed narrator’s realizations with the gradual development of the town in which he lives. In this way, the novel can also be read as a critique on nostalgia and urban development.

The narrator and his mother move into the neighborhood when the town it’s attached to is still small. The family’s financial status provides the impetus for their move; they’re drawn to the neighborhood because the relatively low cost of living enables them to keep a home in a suburban community. The narrator regards his earliest years in the town as a happy time: “I thought my home was as close to a palace as one could hope for” (14). His rosy perspective of the neighborhood extends to the woods behind his home, his oldest play area and the site of many excursions that feed his imagination. At this point, his fear of monsters remains rooted in the imaginary world. The threat of the woods remains abstract, kept at a distance by the safety of the real world.