My free-association with Oscar Hijuelos’ name went: big fat book-made-into-movie, something about Mambo Kings, Pulitzer, someday. His slimmer, gentler novel, Mr. Ives’ Christmas, I’d never even heard of. And when I finally did, I assumed it was some O. Henry attempt at a holiday story.
So wrong.
The book’s as timeless as its themes: faith, doubt, hope, death, grief, love, endurance.
And it’s not preachy.
Without any of the usual devices—charm, wry wit, curmudgeonliness, quirky ideas or an intriguing disability—Hijuelos makes Mr. Ives utterly likeable. He’s the softspoken, sweet-hearted guy you meet in an elevator or coffeeshop and walk away smiling, without even knowing why. He’s someone rarer every day in contemporary fiction: a genuinely good and sincere man.
Virtue doesn’t usually sell well. But what Hijuelos does, rather brilliantly, is turn a spare plot—the death of Ives’ son—into a book as tense as any spy thriller. Will this good man forgive his son’s killer? What will the killer do in return?
You live the questions, as we all live our own existential questions every day. And Hijuelos sweetens them with a truly good marriage, a truly good friendship, and the evocative smells and textures of the best kind of old New York neighborhood.
You don’t just read Mr. Ives’ Christmas. You feel it. And it soaks, ever so lightly and unobtrusively, into your soul.
--Jeannette Cooperman, staff writer
