As Simple As Snow — Gregory Galloway
Putnam
2005
Rating:


Melt All the Ice in My Head: Songs for the One I Love

1. Killian's Red – Nada Surf
2. Absolutely Cuckoo – The Magnetic Fields
3. Beautiful – The Smashing Pumpkins
4. Come Here – Kath Bloom
5. Your Love is The Place Where I Come From – Teenage Fanclub
6. Sweet Thing – Van Morrison
7. The Way Young Lovers Do (Live) – Jeff Buckley
8. Let My Love Open the Door (E.cola Mix) – Pete Townshend
9. I Can't Believe That You're in Love with Me – Billie Holiday
10. So Much Love – Dusty Springfield
11. We'll Make a Lover of You – Les Savy Fav
12. Brand New Colony – The Postal Service
13. Medley: Please Please Please/You've Got the Power/I Found Someone/Why Do You (Live) – James Brown
14. Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch – The Temptations
15. Here, There and Everywhere – The Beatles
16. Ladies and Gentleman We're Floating in Space – Spiritualized

At least since "High Fidelity," mix CDs have become the new love letter. That's certainly the case for Anna Cayne and the unnamed narrator who loves her in Gregory Galloway's "As Simple As Snow." The narrator meets the antiestablishment Goth chick when she moves into his neighborhood during his sophomore year of high school. They bond at the library the way young lovers do, with Anna extolling the merits of William S. Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft over Jack Kerouac and Stephen King, and she soon has him listening to Sonic Youth, Teenage Fanclub and The Jam. Gregory and Anna spend their days doing wonderfully idiosyncratic things, like writing obituaries for the people of the town and writing messages in books on the supernatural. Anna is the kind of girl that, like "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind's" Clementine, the narrator thinks will save him. But he soon finds out that Anna is just a fucked up girl trying to find her own piece of mind. She frequently comes to school with bruises and cuts, and then one day, she disappears. Her clothes are found laid out neatly by the river, but there's no body. The narrator receives a coded map from Anna, sending him on a quest to find her, even if it means using a sιance.

When the narrator chastises himself for being "simple, like snow," Anna points out that snow, with its dense, unique patterns, is actually quite complicated. The same can be said for Galloway's novel, which isn't to say that it's a Haruki Murakami novel, but there's more to it than the average doomed high school romance. More of a supernatural love story than a ghost story, the book acutely charts the romance between an average teenage boy and a hipster, and the grief he succumbs to when she disappears. The clues the narrator receives that may reveal the ultimate fate of Anna all fit together to form an amazing puzzle. It's a great supernatural mystery that's handled realistically and has rational explanations. Gregory pursues the clues in the heartbreaking hope that Anna still exists in some form, even if it's a supernatural one. "There are people you meet in life that will forever change you, forever alter everything about yourself," one character says. "They become part of you, and if they leave, you have been robbed of that treasure, a part of you has been ripped away." "As Simple As Snow" is a compelling examination of grief that's further amplified by its supernatural undertones and the moving relationship at its core.

Posted Sunday, May 22, 2005

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/book/gregory.galloway/as.simple.as.snow