Mississippi Library Association

Ferret Island

Jennings, Richard W. Ferret Island.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
227 pp. $16.00

Like its prototype, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, this book is hard to categorize. Is it an outrageous adventure story for boys, a coming-of-age novel for teenagers, or an allegory for adults? In a word, yes; it is all three and more. Take equal parts Huck Finn and Candide, add a dash of Sam Spade, and a generous dollop of Roget’s Thesaurus and the result might be something like the book’s protagonist, Will Finn.
At first I found both plot and vocabulary off-putting. Like students in a bad creative writing class, both the main character and the narrator pile adjectives onto every noun resulting in an astoundingly stilted authorial voice. The premise, a teenage boy castaway on an island in the Mississippi River populated by giant ferrets and a reclusive famous author, seemed too preposterous to be believed or to be humorous. Only when the Helen Reddy-esque description of the odor of the ferrets, “I am weasel; smell me more,” hit me between the eyes did I discern the subtle network of parody underlying the entire work. For well-read adults the book is an elaborate puzzle of allusions, not least of all the chapter headings, which paraphrase the titles of literary and musical icons. Will the presumed target audience, young teenage boys, like it? Possibly. It has the exaggerated outlines of a graphic novel without the pictures. Given its origin as a weekly serial published in the Sunday magazine of the Kansas City Star, this would be a good novel for reading aloud as a family. At very least, it will appeal to readers in the Kansas City and Arkansas-Memphis-Mississippi Delta area with references to familiar
places and practices. This book is recommended for school and public libraries.

Olivia H. McIntyre
Collection Development Librarian
Northeast Regional Library, Corinth, MS

Entry Filed under: Book Reviews
Posted on: June 26th, 2008