Hartley Staples, the main character and narrator of The Collected Works of Gretchen Oyster is a fairly normal 13-year-old who is having to deal with some not-so-normal life changes. His older brother has disappeared and although it's not the first time Jackson has run away, this latest disappearance seems to be tearing the family apart. Added to that trauma, Hartley's best friend has stopped talking to him. So when Hartley begins finding handmade postcards around town -- each one signed "g.o." -- the search for the artist becomes an obsession that allows him a bit of escape from his personal problems.

The idea of a mysterious postcard artist leaving handmade cards around town is just so appealing! I love collecting homemade postcards and making my own, so this was a book I just had to read. But I have to admit I was initially attracted to the book primarily for the cover art. Most likely nothing could quite live up to that intro, but "Gretchen Oyster" turned out to be a very entertaining read. I was a little more intrigued by the Gretchen character than I probably should have been, and I think that kept me from completely connecting with Hartley. But both main characters were fully developed and their stories were compelling. It's a well written book that I think middle school readers will enjoy. ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this middle grade read (plus look at that great cover!). It's narrated by an 8th grade boy, Hartley Staples, whose older brother has run away from and been missing for some time (a year at most). This has obviously made his family and home life a little topsy turvy. One day he finds a handmade postcard, stuck in an out of the way place, with the initials G.O. on the bottom. He finds another, and the postcards are numbers, so he makes it his mission to find more and to try to find the creator. The book includes the postcards in full color.

This is a calm book, narrated by a boy who is having a hard time, and it felt very real to me. When I was in fourth and fifth grade my brother ran away various times and was in juvenile detention at others. Hartley's general attitude really rang true to me. The book also succeeded in feeling like it was set Now without having a lot of really specific references, so I think it will age very well. I was surprised to learn the author is in his 60s. ( )

The Collected Works of Gretchen Oyster is a first-person account of the emotional coming-of-age of the central character, Hartley. Sealed off from his parents as the family copes with the loss of his runaway older brother, Hartley has no one to help him with his own thoughts and feelings. He lacks the life experience to understand what is happening and finds himself distracted by the discovery of handmade postcards randomly appearing around town. The title asks “who is Gretchen Oyster” but the story asks “who will Hartley become as he learns to cope with deep loss”. ( )

“What I’ve realized is you never know what will happen next.”

Thirteen-year-old Hartley Staples’s troubled brother, Jackson, disappeared nine months ago. It isn’t the first time he’s run away. Jackson made previous escapes when he was eleven and fourteen, but those attempts, being of shorter duration, did not shake the family’s foundations the way this one has. Jackson’s twin sister, Heather, has withdrawn from the world. The youngest Staples child, George, is the least troubled. His quirky imagination helps him bob along, like a cork in a river. Hartley’s parents are so distraught over their eldest son’s disappearance, they barely notice Hartley exists.

To make matters worse, Hartley’s best friend, Zack, has also withdrawn from him. Like many people, Ms. Mirani, Zack’s mother, thinks other people’s misfortune is contagious. The Miranis were initially supportive of Hartley’s family, but then they abruptly distanced themselves. Hartley had phoned over for his friend one day and got Mrs. Marini instead. “Zack is a special boy,” she told Hartley, “he needs to surround himself with positive influences.” For people to succeed in life, she added, they have to cut out all the negative influences in their lives—and even it means being ruthless. Still, she really did wish Hartley’s family the best; the Staples would remain foremost in the Marinis’ “positive thoughts.”

The story proper opens one Saturday afternoon when Hartley slips unnoticed out of the family home. With nothing better to do, he goes to the Whirton Library, housed in a mobile home. The Whirton Library, aka “the Place Where Books Go to Die,” has no budget. Its stacks are filled with cast-offs, donations direct from musty basements of family homes: lots of paperback romances, true crime, and an almost complete set of a magazine called Funeral Service Monthly. Looking for something in teen fiction that isn’t “about a kid whose mother was dying or father was dying or whose mother, father, or girlfriend . . . [has] been turned into a zombie,” Hartley finds, sticking up from the pages of a book, the first of nine post-card sized artworks, each a small collage with enigmatic poetry formed of cut-out type and signed. “g.o.”. This one reads—all in lower case: “i hate all kinds of flags except pirate flags.” In the following weeks, the last few of the school year, Hartley finds more of these cards—stuck in trees, between bicycle wheel spokes, and in fences. He carefully stores them in a small tin box, with a view to presenting them to his missing brother, should he ever return. Hartley also does his best to search out the identity of the elusive artist poet who is planting them.

Another of Hartley’s challenges in these last days before he graduates from elementary school is to research a topic of his own choosing. Ms. Gorham, Hartley’s sensitive and sympathetic grade-eight teacher, is willing to allow him to forego this assignment. She is as aware as the next person in Whirton that it is hard for Hartley to feel passionate about anything given the worry over his brother’s disappearance. However, the boy will accept no special treatment. When pressed about the subject of his project, he is as surprised as his teacher to hear himself blurt the word “tractors”. What?! Where did that idea come from?

Hartley’s only real passion at this point is, of course, finding “g.o.” who, as the title of Fagan’s book announces, is actually Gretchen Oyster. Gretchen has a story of her own, which the reader gains real satisfaction in eventually coming to know.

I love Cary Fagan’s unconventional writing, the unique sensibility and sensitivity that informs it. I don’t know how he does it. His books for children are works of some depth, yet they are also characterized by humour and a remarkable lightness of touch. They are probably not for everybody, but they are special gifts to those of us who appreciate something different.

I enjoyed this book and I’m very grateful to the publisher for providing me with a free copy of it to review. ( )

I liked the potential that this book had. It just didn't live up to my expectations.

Hartley does a lot of telling in the story. He just kind of meanders along, going through these heavy issues like his brother running away, and how that's changed his family dynamic. But there's no real feeling to the experience. You're in the middle of it, and he's just telling you about it as he goes along.

You can tell that he's lost, and he's struggling. But I didn't really feel sorry for hm at all, because I didn't like him very much as a character.

I loved the cards that Gretchen made, and the story they told. Although the story centers around Hartley and his discovering them, I wish the story had been even more focused on Gretchen. She too is going through some tough issues, with her parents beint divorced and her being bullied at school.

None of these serious issues are resolved constructively, which will probably isolate a reader going through a similar experience rather than draw them in.

A quick read, but I wouldn't recommend it.

*Please note I won a copy of this via Librarything Giveaway* ( )