Far - but not Far Enough

Too Far's ending brings everything back to the world of the mundane. Robbie's dad and Fristeen's mom are the Dream Man and Dawn, and though the children try to reach some sort of salvation through a shivering winter storm their parents just bring them back home. The book then ends with a short epilogue about the ever-presence of the location Too Far, a seasonless place of ever returning warmth and love.

What needs to be understood before all else with regard to this book is main focus is its characters. Robbie and Fristeen are seen to grow throughout the book as they grow together. But, much of what they say is decidedly not child-like. Creating a new geography and mythology for a place that they had discovered themselves is definitely what six year olds would do. But more often than not their dialogue is too advanced. They sound more like teens than kids.

Their mismatched dialogue may just be the result of the narrator's tone. It's quite clear that these kids are being taken seriously, which is a great thing. Taking them so seriously, though, really brings out a lot of assumptions. It's a way to build suspense, but more often than not the promise of that suspense is not fulfilled.

Until the book's final scene, I was sure that the kids were going to jump from a mountain, or actually be immolated - that they would die one way or another. Ending the book with a return to their mundane lives undercut the suspense it had generated in that it the actual outcome was far less than anything expected. Shapero lifts us up on flights of fancy and leaves us crashing to the ground at the end.

Yet, such a grisly end would greatly undermine the book's central theme of growth. The epilogue reinforces this theme, and does a decent job of it, in spite of being a shortcut to such reinforcement.

Ultimately, if you can suspend your disbelief about the maturity of six year olds, and a blurry line between the mundane world and the fabulous things kids can dream up, Too Far is your book. Its writing is strong enough to carry you through, but not quite enough to make this an absolute must read for everyone.