An Intriguing Story of REAL People

• Book: Telling Sonny
• Location: Vermont
• Author: Elizabeth Gauffreau

Review Author: Keith Madsen

What I liked best about this novel is that it could have been a stereotypical “mean male chauvinist versus innocent female victim” morality tale, but it was not. You see it far too often — the “typical male” screws the sweet young woman over, but in the end she turns the tables on him and makes him regret the error of his ways, and wish he would have been nicer to him. Wouldn’t it be nice. But this was a story about REAL PEOPLE. Yes, the man (Louis) does use his showman’s facade to lure the central female character (Faby) into his web, and I (a male!) do not wish to defend that kind of manipulation. Many women have indeed been victims of men who knew how to put on an appearance to obtain their sexual prey. But it is to the author’s merit that the story does not follow the “story ruts” to its expected conclusion. To start off with, Louis does not simply run when he finds he has impregnated Faby. He is actually the one who suggests they get married, and while she later second-guesses her decision to accept his proposal, the marriage does not become an abusive one. We understand that while Louis is a showman who is better at performing than he is at being human, he IS trying. He is often gentle and considerate. Still, in the end he fails as a husband, and does end up dying (neither statement is a spoiler as we learn this in the first chapter.)

Faby’s challenge becomes (as the book title indicates), how she tells “Sonny” that his father has died as he prepares to get married himself. How she resolves this is not a morality tale, but rather a picture of human struggle to mature and grow with the disappointments life sometimes throws at us.

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