The Blue Star

In this sequel to Jim the Boy, a now-teenaged Jim Glass falls hard for Chrissie Steppe, the mysterious, reluctant girlfriend of local bigshot Bucky Bucklaw, who has left Aliceville to fight in World War II. With war tensions mounting and gossip spreading, Jim tries to figure out a way to win Chrissie over. Meanwhile, a long-ago romance between her mother and Jim’s protective Uncle Zeno threatens to complicate the situation even further.



The Blue Star marks the maturation of not only a character, but an author as well. While Jim the Boy gave Tony Earley a chance to introduce compelling characters and show off his North Carolina roots, there was something cloyingly winsome and provincial about that text. Thankfully, both The Blue Star and its protagonist have developed a bit of an edge. War, love triangles, teen pregnancy, and discrimination permeate this follow-up. Aliceville is still Aliceville, but Earley wisely decided to let more of the outside world in.


This isn’t to say that anyone will be confusing Earley with Palahniuk any time soon. The Blue Star’s plot and conflict are both conventional and familiar, as if ripped from some black-and-white melodrama. However, an infusion of colorful characters keeps it from being too mundane. Jim’s three bickering uncles are back, joined for this go-around by his juvenile friend Dennis Deane and his former flame Norma Harris (who, truth be told, seems a little too nice). Though absent from the actual narrative, Chrissie’s outlaw Cherokee father casts a dark shadow over the book, much the same way Jim’s bootlegger grandfather did the last go-around.


Earley carries over the practice of revealing out-of-narrative information through letters between the adults. It provides an interesting point of contrast for the story that’s being told through Jim’s eyes, but the effect it produces is akin to watching a movie where a lot of the big moments happen off-screen. Similarly, the book’s time structure is incredibly uneven. One day might span two chapters, while the next chapter might take place a month in the future.


The Blue Star’s title refers to a symbol hung in a window to indicate a member of a family is serving during wartime. The set-up for a continuation of Jim's adventures in a future book is insultingly obvious, but like everything else that’s wrong here (the simplicity, the familiarity, the cheese sentimentality), it works anyway. Above all else, Earley has created a character whose life you want to read about, and that is no small feat.


7.25/10