{"id":7115,"date":"2026-08-24T09:23:36","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T09:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=7115"},"modified":"2026-08-24T09:23:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T09:23:36","slug":"reel-around-the-fountain-by-roy-edward-jackson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=7115","title":{"rendered":"Reel Around the Fountain by Roy Edward Jackson"},"content":{"rendered":"

A clear-eyed coming-of-age novel about how families use stories to disperse blame, hide harm, and keep one another alive<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cThe day you were born was the worst day of my life,\u201d<\/em><\/strong> JP\u2019s older sister, Anna, tells him. A heavy legacy to hand to a thirteen-year-old.<\/p>\n

According to Griffin family mythology, JP\u2019s birth set off a chain of disasters the family never recovered from. John Paul II, JP\u2019s father, fell in the shower and never walked again. His mother, overwhelmed with a new baby and a disabled husband, withdrew from JP before abandoning the family entirely. His grandmother felt forced to abandon a job she loved in favor of one with higher pay and fewer perks, and his grandfather gave up trucking to become a full-time caretaker.<\/p>\n

Roy Edward Jackson\u2019s Reel Around the Fountain<\/em> begins with JP investigating the events of that fateful day. He questions his sister Anna, his father, and his commanding grandmother GG, collecting details and comparing stories. Everyone agrees on the general sequence of events, but everything else is erratic. GG insists there was a storm, thunder, a tornado, a freak April blizzard, while Anna swears the weather was fine. Anna blames herself for moving their father after the fall, though there is no evidence that the move contributed to his immobility. JP, meanwhile, has grown up believing that he was the cause of everyone\u2019s suffering.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

JP soon learns that even if you can get the facts straight, it doesn\u2019t undo anything besides maybe shift the blame.<\/p>\n

The day of his birth isn\u2019t the only mystery JP grapples with either. He\u2019s got to try to survive the present while investigating the past. In the fading Midwestern factory town everyone calls Cereal City, JP serves as an altar boy, attending Masses and funerals for tips, all while quietly reckoning with his attraction to boys. He also hopes serving the church might quiet his attraction. Instead, Father Daniel begins singling him out for private attention. However, what initially feels like special recognition reveals itself to be predatory grooming.<\/p>\n

Jackson follows JP through the abuse and its aftermath without letting that experience consume his entire character or the novel. The abuse matters enormously, but JP\u2019s life is also full of music, work, petty schemes, family jokes, bad hair, library books, cigarettes, and the familiar adolescent need to transform into anyone else.<\/p>\n

The entire book is written in second-person narration in which the protagonist addresses his younger self. For this reader, it felt a little confrontational at first, as if the narrator were forcing JP to stand inside memories. By the middle of the novel, the \u201cyou\u201d no longer reads as a flourish. It marks the distance between the adult narrator and the boy who lived through the story.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt thirteen, maturity wasn\u2019t about what you learned but rather about understanding what needed to stay hidden.\u201d<\/em><\/strong> JP grows up around adults who survive through silence, exaggeration, alcohol, strategic dishonesty, and selective memory. He learns early that telling the truth can be dangerous, but the author knows that secrecy isn\u2019t always simple cowardice.<\/p>\n

GG\u2019s instincts are often ethically compromised, but Jackson grounds them in a lifetime of distrust. She knows institutions protect themselves first and poor families last, so police, social workers, and public scrutiny rarely look like help. GG is manipulative, profane, ruthless, observant, and capable of acts of extraordinary care that she\u2019d never describe as tenderness. She can manipulate school records, steal miniature liquor bottles from motel rooms, and ensure service workers are tipped properly. She lies whenever the truth seems inefficient. She also recognizes that JP cannot survive in Cereal City and quietly begins building his escape route.<\/p>\n

Jackson never cleans her up or turns her into a lovable eccentric, which is easy to appreciate as a reader. Her humor has teeth, and some of her decisions cause real damage. That contradiction gives her life. She understands other people through what they do, what they need, and what they can be talked into doing next.<\/p>\n

Former trucker turned full-time caregiver, Paw Paw, is a gentle contrast to the domineering GG. His masculinity is built around competence rather than performance. He changes diapers, becomes JP\u2019s school \u201croom mom,\u201d watches soap operas, learns physical therapy exercises, and keeps struggling businesses afloat without making anyone feel like a charity case. One of the book\u2019s most affecting observations comes when JP finally understands that Paw Paw\u2019s unnecessary weekly haircuts were a way of supporting an old barber without humiliating him.<\/p>\n

Jackson\u2019s working class works here, building Cereal City through the windowless barrooms, the Ben Franklin record rack, bus routes, and uncleanable motel carpets. Money matters here in a concrete way. It\u2019s a twenty-dollar bill handed to an altar boy, a job secured during a crisis, and an education financed through hush money.<\/p>\n

Jackson is also very funny, often at moments when a slightly more cautious novel becomes too solemn. JP wonders whether a casino employee wearing pantyhose and a bathing suit is part of a Soviet synchronized-swimming team. He mouths \u201cwatermelon\u201d<\/em><\/strong> during Latin prayers because Anna tells him the word resembles anything when viewed from a distance. After finally telling Anna what happened with the priest, he breaks the unbearable silence by asking what the hell she\u2019s done to her hair.<\/p>\n

That humor doesn\u2019t diminish the pain, but it gives JP a full personality. He\u2019s wounded, but he\u2019s also judgmental, vain, curious, opportunistic, and occasionally a little shit. He can grieve for his family while exploiting their guilt to get new records. Jackson allows him the inconsistency every real adolescent deserves.<\/p>\n

The novel occasionally relies a little too much on exposition when the scenes and dialogue have already done the job. Ideas about burden, hidden lives, family mythology, lost time, and becoming invisible recur so often that some passages risk restating emotional conclusions the scenes have already made clear. My favorite writing here trusts physical objects: a scratched record, a dirty carpet, a razor held against a father\u2019s face, a plastic grave marker with the name wearing away.<\/p>\n

The accumulation works to build on the question of who gets to tell JP\u2019s story and carries real weight: \u201cYou\u2019d spent so much time telling other people\u2019s stories to avoid telling your own\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Reel Around the Fountain<\/em> has echoes of Justin Torres\u2019s We the Animals<\/em> and Douglas Stuart\u2019s Shuggie Bain,<\/em> particularly in its portrayals of queer adolescence, working-class families, and imperfectly expressed love. Jackson\u2019s novel is more expansive and chattier, with a deep investment in music and the strange private economies families create to survive.<\/p>\n

JP begins the book by trying to discover whether his life destroyed everyone else\u2019s. He ends it with a harder, more useful understanding of why families must sometimes make myths. Reel Around the Fountain<\/em> understands that family myths can both protect and wound. Untangling them may bring clarity, but never without cost.<\/p>\n

The post Reel Around the Fountain by Roy Edward Jackson<\/a> appeared first on Independent Book Review<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A clear-eyed coming-of-age novel about how families use stories to disperse blame, hide harm, and keep one another alive \u201cThe day you were born was the worst day of my life,\u201d JP\u2019s older sister, Anna, tells him. A heavy legacy to hand to a thirteen-year-old. According to Griffin family mythology, JP\u2019s birth set off a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7115"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}