The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans
Dec
'07
The first time this book striked out was when I realized that the main character was named Richard Paul Evans. I am of the opinion that unless you’re marketing your book as a true story, a memoir, an experience that you have personally had, you should not be the main character in your book. All I have seen about this book, unless specifically searching for “The Christmas Box” and “true story,” is that the box had come to this young father and through it he learned the true meaning of Christmas.
In any case, I read this because it’s a Christmas-y book and I wanted to know what the appeal of it was, but I can see now that it’s just as sappy as that book which is based on the Christmas shoes song, where the little boy wants to buy his dying mother some shoes which he cannot afford, but since the shoes are just her size, they are clearly the perfect gift. The little boy wants her to look beautiful for Jesus as if putting shoes on in her death bed would impress the guy. I understand that younger folk don’t possess the logic that older folk possess, and the idea of giving his mother beautiful shoes for Christmas was all he could wish for her, but I also feel that if Daddy says there’s not a lot of time left, Daddy should keep the kid by his mother’s side so, you know, the child doesn’t miss his mother’s death while he’s out trying to buy shoes.
What concerns me also about The Christmas Box is that I easily found a $5 paperback copy and yet no one else in my bookclub can find a copy for less than $27, because they’re all hardcover. It’s as though the paperback doesn’t exist except for this one which I’ve just read, and I know why. I know it’s more “meaningful” to give someone a hardcover for Christmas (though I should mention to those of you buying me books that I much prefer trade paperbacks) so bookstores don’t feel it’s necessary to sell a paperback version of a sappy Christmas story: They make more money this way. That kid could do to learn a lot from bookstores. However, I brought this topic up to Richard and while telling him of my complaints about this book (mainly that the author is the main character and how quickly the events passed and thus how unattached to the characters I was), I was also thinking about how “touching” A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is, and how because this is a well-known classic it would be much more prudent to buy a nice, shiny hardcover edition as a Christmas present, this book is still sold in paperback. So, basically, we came to the conclusion that The Christmas Box is a scheme. It’s about the true meaning of Christmas, blablabla, but because of publishers’ and bookstores’ refusal to sell it at a reasonable price, the marketing of the book negates the meaning of the book itself!
Aside from all that, I still want to comment on the book itself. I have a firm dislike of “sappy” stories like this, so my opinion is more than slightly skewed when I say that this book wasn’t very appealing. However, I know that a lot of people go in for that sort of story, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I can certainly be pulled into a tale of heartbreaking Christmas spirit from time to time (for example, the aforementioned Dickens classic gets me in every adaptation every year), but it’s the writing that grasps me. This is not a very well-written book. The author’s website mentions that it was written within six weeks, and it shows. It’s a Nanowrimo edited down to the basic sentence structure; there’s very little description, almost no character development, and when I learned that he had written a prequel I wanted to shake him and say “you would have done much better to combine the two books, add some descriptive phrases, and left it as an all-encompassing miracle book that runs through the lives of two families!” But I realize that he makes more money by selling two $27 hardcover books than he does by selling one potentially great, fulfilling novel.
All that said, it wasn’t bad. It did just what it promised: told the story of how an old woman and a box changes the life of a too-distant father and husband. It’s not matter-of-fact the way Stardust was in fairy tale language, but it was very straight forward with no tangents or wavering; it had all the necessary “symbolism” and foreshadowing before it spilled all and let the reader know exactly what all the symbolism and foreshadowing was for (as an English major, I was disappointed that it didn’t just end non-descriptly and allow me to draw conclusions for myself, but I suppose the general public doesn’t enjoy books that don’t explain every minute detail about what’s going on).
I suppose what I’m trying to get across is that I’m more disappointed in the way the book presents itself than in the story itself. Decently constructed, this was a “touching” story of love and friendship, but it still feels as though he picked it up off the outline, added some verbs, and then went to publish it.
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