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The daily rhythm of a veterinarian’s family in rural New England is shaken when a hunting accident leaves their eldest son in a coma. With the lives of his loved ones unhinged, the veterinarian struggles to maintain stability while searching for the man responsible. But in the midst of their great trial an unexpected visitor arrives, requesting a favor that will have profound consequences—testing a loving father’s patience, humor, and resolve and forcing husband and wife to come to terms with what “family” truly means.
The Call is a gift from one of the most talented and extraordinary voices in contemporary fiction—a unique and heartfelt portrait of a family, poignant and rich in humor and imagination.
As Murphy's sixth book for adults (Signed, Mata Hari,2007, etc.) gets started, a large-animal veterinarian in rural New England faces various small uncertainties: an iffy economy, weirdrecurrent lights in the night sky, a marriage in which there are minor flare-ups.
He has unspecified medical issues, too; his"levels" are volatile and worrying, and he resists going to the doctor. Murphy tells the tale mostly through the vet's reports—alternately no-nonsense and taciturn ("Call," "Action," "Result")or expansive and playful ("Who Walked Into the Hospital Room While I Was Moving My Hand Like the Spaceship")—ofthe calls he receives from animal owners, andtheinnovative form is perfectly suited to thedoctor's voice: calm, cheerful, attentive, reliable, but also naggingly worried and prone to withhold or diminish the sources of his anxieties. Onemay betempted at first to see him as a worrywart whose sense of foreboding is exaggerated,maybe an effect of the gathering chill of fall, which augurs another long, cold, mostly idle winter. Then, while he's hunting on his property with his 12-year-old son, the boy is accidentally shot in the shoulder and topples from a stand, lands on his head and lapses into a coma.The vet and his family try gamely to hold things together, but the strain is awful, and everyonein the small community seems to him a suspect.But is this a mystery worth pursuing, or merely a distraction from his real duty? He's never quite sure.Eventually afamiliar-looking stranger—whom the vet takes to calling "the spaceman"—arrives in a whirring electric car and asks a favor that will have enormous implications for the entire family.Murphy is a subtle, psychologically perceptive writer, and the bookhasa wry humorthat'slaconic and surrealand shot through with the tender mysteries of family life.
A marvelous book: sweet and poignant without ever succumbing to easy sentiment, formally inventive and dexterous without ever seeming showy. A triumph.
Yannick Murphy's previous novel, the alluring Signed, Mata Hari (2007), channeled the seductive voice of the glamorous Dutch- born exotic dancer who was executed by the French in 1917 for purported espionage. With The Call, Murphy returns closer to home—way closer—though not to the tough, gritty New York City of the 1970s described in her autobiographical coming-of-age tale, Here They Come (2006).
The Call takes the form of a series of wry, terse bulletins about the stresses and joys of work and family. The narrator—or diarist—is a veterinarian who lives in rural Vermont with his wife, a harried homemaker/writer, their three children, and their two Newfoundland dogs. (Yannick Murphy lives in rural Vermont with her veterinarian husband, three children, and two Newfoundlands.) If this sounds prosaic, let me stress that The Call is anything but: it is fresh and beguiling on several levels.
First, there's the unusual outline format, in which the narrator, David Appleton, telegraphs his daily thoughts and activities in descriptions pared to the essentials but flecked with humor. For example: "CALL: A cow with her dead calf half-born. ACTION: Put on boots and pulled dead calf out while standing in a field of mud. RESULT: Hind legs tore off from dead calf while I pulled. WHAT THE CHILDREN SAID TO ME WHEN I GOT HOME: Hi, Pop."
Packed into the clever, clipped entries is all sorts of quirky information, providing fascinating glimpses into what for many readers will be a world almost as exotic as that of Mata Hari. The narrator receives calls for "colicking" horses, "chokes, " prepurchase exams, difficult births, and putting down lame animals. His tools include an emasculator for castrating a draft horse, a tube to snake through a colicking horse's nostrils in order to pipe oil into its stomach, gentamicin injections for a shire's respiratory infection, and portable x-ray equipment. His clients include an old woman who takes her beloved sheep, named Alice, with her to church, and a man who winters his cows in his basement. The good doctor is reminded the hard way—with an eyeful of spit—never to look an alpaca in the eye. Ducks, we learn, unlike chickens, defecate liquid, and the pig is the rare animal that uses mirrors the way people do. Among the goods David is offered in exchange for his services are mutton, maple syrup, and a pet rat—which, in deference to his wife's sensibilities, he declines.
All this is plenty to hold our interest, but there's also dramatic tension. The Call spans four seasons, beginning with the fall, when David takes his oldest child, 12-year-old son Sam, deer hunting for the first time. In order to spot their prey, they climb onto two wooden tree stands on their property. When Sam is knocked off his perch by the impact of a gunshot hitting his shoulder—mistaken for grouse by a fugitive hunter—David "can't get to him fast enough." (28) He rushes Sam to the hospital, where he languishes in a coma, his future uncertain. His wife reacts with rage. David obsesses over finding the man responsible, surprisingly difficult in a town of 600 with 100 hunting licenses.
Murphy's narrator is an idiosyncratic guy. He's convinced that he keeps seeing spacecraft—one of the book's less engaging leitmotifs meant to highlight David's sense of the myriad dangers always lurking and ready to upend his family's happiness and safety. There's an additional plot development (which I won't give away) concerning a caller who tests the family's moral fiber. The book would have been fine without it, though it demonstrates the lengths to which the narrator will go to protect the people and animals he cares about.
All is not hunky-dory chez Appleton, but it's a loving home nonetheless. Their bedroom is abuzz with flies. Their diapered pet rabbit is given free rein. Work is worrisomely slow. The couple fight: "WHAT MY WIFE CAN DO: Make me angrier than I have ever been. WHAT OUR NEWFOUNDLAND DOGS DO: Never make me angry." (50) His reaction when she rants about the household mess or hounds him to have his abnormally high PSA levels rechecked is to run outside with his kids.
It's fascinating to read about all this from a male point of view, as imagined by a woman, and even more intriguing when one considers Murphy's authorial flexibility and generosity in stepping outside herself to show the wife in a less than flattering light and give the husband the last word. One of David's entries reads: "THIS IS WHAT I WANT ON MY TOMBSTONE: He loved his children." (11) The portrait of family life that emerges in The Call—at once ironic and warm—is "as layered as something in nature." Wonderful.
Heller McAlpin is a New York–based critic who reviews books for NPR.org, The Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, and other publications. Reviewer: Heller McAlpin
Call: A cow with her dead calf half-born.
Action: Put on boots and pulled dead calf out while standing in
a field full of mud.
Result: Hind legs tore off from dead calf while I pulled. Head,
forelegs, and torso are still inside the mother.
Thoughts on drive home while passing red and gold
leaves on maple trees: Is there a nicer place to live?
What children said to me when I got home: Hi, Pop.
What The wife cooked for dinner: Something mixed-up.
Call: Old woman with minis needs bute paste.
Action: Drove to old woman's house, delivered bute paste. Pet
minis. Learned their names—Molly, Netty, Sunny, and Storm.
Result: Minis are really cute.
Thoughts on drive home: Must bring children back here sometime
to see the cute minis.
What children said to me when I got home: Hi, Pop.
What the wife cooked for dinner: Steak and potatoes, no
salad. She said, David, our salad days are over, it now being autumn
and the garden bare except for wind-tossed fallen leaves.
Call: Sick sheep.
Action: Visited sheep. Noticed they'd eaten all the thistle.
Result: Talked to owner, who is a composer, about classical music.
Admired his tall barn beams. Advised owner to fence off thistle so
sheep couldn't eat it. Sheep become sick from thistle.
Thoughts on drive home: Is time travel possible? Maybe time
is not a thing. Because light takes a while to travel, what we're
seeing is always in the past.
What the wife cooked for dinner: Breakfast.
Call: Castrate draft horse.
Action: Pulled out emasculators, castrated draft horse.
Result: Draft horse bled buckets. Pooled around his hooves.
Owner said she had never seen so much blood. It's okay, he's got
a lot of blood, I said. She nodded. She braided the fringe on her
poncho, watching the blood.
Thoughts on drive home: What's the point of a poncho if it
doesn't cover your arms?
What the wife cooked for dinner: Nut loaf.
What I ate for dinner: Not nut loaf.
Call: Horse is colicking.
Action: Drove to farm dodging dry, brown leaves skating across
the road because at first I thought they were mice or voles running
to the safety of the other side. Gave horse Banamine. Watched him
sweating. Watched him rolling on his stall floor. Watched owner
cry. Just a few tears down a freckled cheek. Listened to horses in
other stalls whinny, worried for the colicky horse.
Result: Stayed for hours, until night. Moon was full. Walked
horse out to field by the apple tree. Gave him a shot to put him to
sleep. Patted his neck. Left owner with her head by his head, not
saying anything. Maybe just breathing in his last exhaled breath.
Thoughts on drive home: When I go I want to go in a field by
an apple tree on a full-moon night.
What I saw when I pulled up to the house: Bright lights in
the sky, an object moving quickly back and forth. Not a plane.
What I heard from children when I got home: Gentle
snoring.
What I heard from my wife when I got home: Loud snoring.
Call: Sheep with a cut from a fence.
Action: Drove to farm. Inspected sheep. Cut was old. Small white
worms were crawling on it. Gave owner some antibiotic.
Result: Asked owner if he had seen the bright lights in the sky the
night before. Owner shrugged. I go to bed, the owner said.
Thoughts on drive home: Since people have become used to
seeing telephone wires and telephone poles everywhere, they can
get used to seeing wind turbines everywhere. It's just a matter of
getting used to something.
Call: Alpaca down.
Action: Drove to farm. Remembered not to look alpaca in the
eye.
Result: Looked alpaca in the eye by mistake. Got spit in the
eye. Alpaca nice and angry now. Alpaca got up. Owner thankful.
Handed me a rag that smelled like gasoline. I wiped my eye. Asked
owner if he had seen the bright lights, the object moving back
and forth in the sky the night before. The owner shook his head,
he hadn't seen anything. The alpaca came to me and put his face
in my face. I thought he was going to spit in my eye again, but he
didn't. The owner laughed, looks like he's trying to tell you something,
the owner said. Did the alpaca want to tell me he had seen
the object in the sky?
Thoughts on drive home: I could have been an engineer or a
fighter pilot.
Call: A pre-purchase examination on a Thoroughbred.
Action: Brought digital X-ray machine and performed a complete
set of X-rays on horse in a barn with ducks, spaniels, and kittens
walking about.
Result: Owner tried to give me a kitten to take home to the children.
No, no, I said. We have two dogs. The dogs will love the cat,
the owner said. How about a duck? the owner said. No, they shit
liquid, I said. Yes, that's true, she said, but the eggs are golden.
Thoughts on ride home: Chickens might be nice to have. The
children could check for eggs every day. We could eat the eggs.
Chickens don't shit liquid. This is the problem today, people don't
know where their food comes from. My children will know where
their food comes from.
Call: A sheep needs its shots.
Action: Took bottles of vaccines and drew up shots.
Result: Old woman named Dorothy called the sheep to her. The
sheep's name was Alice. Alice lived in the house with Dorothy. I'd
let her live outside, but she's no bother inside, Dorothy said. Alice lay
her head in Dorothy's lap. Go on, give the shot, Dorothy said. The
sheep was very still while I gave the shot. She is like a dog, Dorothy
said. I take her everywhere in my pickup. She waits for me until I get
back from my errands. I took her into church one day. I showed the
pastor. He made a remark about sheep. He said they were dumb. Go
get Alice from the back of your pickup, my friend said, nudging me.
I went to the parking lot and got Alice. I held the church doors open
for her. She followed me down the aisle. She looked into people's
faces as she walked. I'd like you to meet Alice, I said to the pastor.
She looked him in the eyes. Now go on, I said. Read the part again
in your sermon about how sheep are dumb, I said.
Thoughts on drive home: I know some people who will not
look me in the eye.
What I saw when I pulled up to the house: The object
flying in the sky again. It seemed to circle the house. More likely it
was a drone the military used and remotely practiced with in our
secluded woods, but still I could not help but think it was other-
worldly, the way its lights flashed on and off, the way it flew so low,
as if it wanted to see in our windows and check on what my family
was doing. I felt that it knew me somehow.
What I felt even before I walked in the door: Warm.
Even though it was cold outside, I already began to feel warm as I
stepped onto the porch where the glass front door always seemed
to be constantly steamed over from the exhaled breaths of my wife,
my children, the dogs, and all the other creatures inside.
What children said to me when I got home: Doesn't Alice
pee and poop on the floor in the house?
What I said: I suppose she does.
What the wife cooked for dinner: Omelets with green
olives.
What the wife said: David, I don't want a sheep.
Call: A cat.
Action: I told owner I don't do cats. The owner asked if I could do
this one. The owner had shot the fisher cats in his barn that had
eaten half his chickens. Shoot the cat, I said, you have shot fisher cats.
You have done huge horses, why can't you just do a little
house cat whose time has come? the owner said.
Result: I did the cat in the belly. I did not need to find a vein. I
was paid in sausage and bacon.
Thoughts on drive home: This war we are in is a war we started
to see how much we can take from another country. It was once
not so easy for me to see it this way.
What the children said to me when I got home: Mom is
not making dinner. Mom is sick on the couch.
What the wife said to me when I got home: David, where's
the gun? If you just shoot this side of my head, I'm sure it will get
rid of my headache. Then Jen laid her head back on the easy chair
where the sun was streaming in and the bright light on her face
made her look porcelain-white.
What I cooked for dinner: Bacon. Glorious fresh bacon given
to me by the man who shot fisher-cats, not house cats. I showed my
children how the bacon did not release injected water into the pan
while it cooked because it was fresh bacon, good bacon. Bacon the
way bacon should be.
Thoughts while turning bacon: Why is it legal to inject
meats with water? Why is it fair that the consumer has to pay extra
money, per pound, for injected water?
What the children said: Pop, don't burn the bacon.
What the wind said at night: I can blow down all your trees.
I can make the walls of your house fall in.
What the morning said: I kept the wind at bay.
Thoughts while showering: Deer season will be here soon.
Already it is bear. We have heard the hunters and their bear dogs
early on the weekend mornings barking, treeing bears. I will hunt
first with a bow for deer this fall season. I will sit high up in a tree
in a purchased stand that came with big labels telling me never to
use it without wearing a safety harness. I will wear the safety
harness. I will check it before I put it on. Are the straps worn? Is the
buckle fastened securely? Are the deer gods on my side?
What my son said at dinner: Aren't I hunting with you this fall?
He had not hunted with me before, this would be his first time. He
was twelve years old now and old enough to carry a gun. He knew
the rules well. He had aced his hunter's exam. Gun tip pointed up
or down when walking through the woods, never shoot at an animal
on a hill, because you never know who might be on the other side
of the hill, open your chamber when passing your gun to someone
and say, "action open, safety on" while you're passing it.
What I said: Yes, I suppose you're ready to hunt with me now.
What my son said: Yes! I can't wait! and then he chanted, Kill
the deer. Eat the meat! Kill the deer. Eat the meat! in time with
holding his fork in his fist and banging his fist on the table, making
me think maybe we should wait. Maybe he wasn't ready to take a
gun into the woods.
What the wife said to me: Be careful hunting, David. I don't
like it. He's still so young. You only have one son, you know.
What I thought: Maybe Jen is wrong, maybe there are other
sons I have. Who knows if the sperm I once donated in college was
ever used or simply thrown away after time? The money I received
was spent on taking dates to restaurants I wouldn't otherwise have
been able to afford.
What I would never tell the wife: That maybe she was
wrong about me not having other sons, because if I told her then
I would have to explain why I wanted the money. I would have to
explain the other girls, and no matter that I didn't know Jen then,
she might become jealous.
What I said to the wife instead to change the subject:
Did you know that because light takes time to travel, what you're
seeing is always in the past?
What the wife said: I like that, it's the world's best excuse. The
adage "Don't cry over spilt milk" applies to everything then. It's all
in the past, there's nothing we can change.
What I thought: That I could tell Jen not to cry over spilt milk
if ever she learned of how I had earned extra money in college and
that somewhere in there was a pun she'd pick up on, the spilt milk
of me somehow worked in.
Call: No call. The phone rang and when I answered, whoever it
was hung up. Hello, hello, I said and I kept saying hello even after
I knew they were gone.
What we did after dinner: Put on sweaters to keep off the
chill and went outside and called to the owls.
What the owls did: Called back and then the spacecraft showed
up again, its lights blinking faster than the last time, as if it were
trying to sing out its own kind of call.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Call by Yannick Murphy Copyright © 2011 by Yannick Murphy. Excerpted by permission of Harper Perennial. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
dayzd89
Posted July 20, 2012
I love this book! It seemed so different and refreshing when I picked it up at the library. I'm so happy that I gave it a chance. I really love Yannick Murphy's unique writing style, which was a little odd at first but which I quickly fell into rhythm with as the story progressed. The characters were complex and far from boring. I really like the main character, he is so real and completely believable. He is far from perfect and he knows it. His sense of humor and insights are hilarious and bring humor in the darkest of moments.
In the beginning it put me off that he is a hunter, but once I got to know him more I realized that he truly cares for the animals. (I still find it a little ironic that he is a vet and a hunter at the same time.) He isn't in his job for profit or for recognition. He genuinely cares for the animals and their owners. The fierce love and protection he holds for his family also shines through the book.
While the book seems simple enough, it's quite complex in its inspection of the relationships between humans and even other animals. It's a lovely little book which made me laugh and feel for the characters like I knew them personally. Highly recommendable.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Keckle
Posted June 22, 2012
A hidden gem in the bookstore. This little book will stay with me for a while. I loved how the narrative embraced both the joy and angst to be found in the simple tasks of daily life. The format, too, is very inventive. I found myself starting to think in that same "journal" style. The main character, so quiet and unassuming, will leave an unexpectedly big footprint on your memory. I highly recommend this book.
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Posted January 30, 2012
I read this book for our Tale of Three Counties series. I have been a reader of this venue since it's inception. Was disappointed in this selection. It was only a mediocre book. I guess I just did not get it especially the spaceship referance. However the format was interesting and the biological father/son relationship concerning organ transplant was a positive as I am an avid proponent. I'm sure this will lead to a lively disscussion.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.goodnurse
Posted October 4, 2011
I loved the different format, I laughed, teared up, winced, sighed and really enjoyed this book
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Written as a journal, this is the story of the daily life of a country veterinarian in rural Vermont. It may sound boring or even stupid as you read the entries. The call he gets from his clients, what he does, what his wife makes for dinner or what his kids say to him or not say to him when he gets home. But somehow, they all weave together into a quaint story of his life. As a reader, we get to learn about such a life and the importance of family.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.lioness2001
Posted August 19, 2011
This book is certainly unusual, but a veterinarian who hunts animals was a bit much for me.
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Posted November 13, 2011
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Overview
The daily rhythm of a veterinarian’s family in rural New England is shaken when a hunting accident leaves their eldest son in a coma. With the lives of his loved ones unhinged, the veterinarian struggles to maintain stability while searching for the man responsible. But in the midst of their great trial an unexpected visitor arrives, requesting a favor that will have profound consequences—testing a loving father’s patience, humor, and resolve and forcing husband and wife to come...