The Green Man

"O" (Ophelia) spends the summer in small-town Ontario, helping her aunt Emily at The Green Man, a struggling second-hand bookshop. Since childhood, Emily has been troubled by dreams of a menacing magic show; now, O glimpses great poets of the past roaming the shop. This imaginative, gracefully written explication of Rimbaud's belief that one must be mad to be a poet makes an entertaining tale.

While Father is finishing his book on Ezra Pound, "O" (Ophelia) spends the summer in small-town Ontario, helping her aunt Emily at The Green Man, a struggling second-hand bookshop. Though both are poets, at first O and Emily don’t make an easy couple: O is obsessively tidy; "Emily’s a bit eccentric…the world wobbles a little as it spins around her." From their two points of view, Bedard explores the idea that poets are necessarily somewhat "crazy," resulting in costs as well as rewards such as imaginative forays into the supernatural. Since childhood, Emily has been troubled by vivid dreams of a menacing magic show; now, O glimpses great poets of the past roaming the shop and wonders about the elusive boy she calls "Rimbaud," another teenage poetry lover who, between mysterious disappearances, helps her refurbish the Green Man sign over the door. Is Rimbaud one of the phantom poets or the evil magician Mephisto, due to return in August? Or is he the Green Man himself? A chance for Emily to acquire a fabulous collection of rare books leads to thrilling and revelatory events that, in the end, settle gently back into reality with an arts council grant to sponsor ongoing poets’ gatherings at the store. Though young readers probably won’t be aware of Rimbaud’s belief that one must be mad to be a poet, this imaginative, gracefully written explication of it makes an entertaining tale. It also explores a thoughtful variety of possible characteristics amongst creative minds. joanna rudge long