The Gypsy Man

By Robert Bausch

Book Overview

The motto of Crawford, Virginia, might well be Beware what you fear, because it may come true. Penny Bone is terrified of the town's local legend of a child-stealing phantom. Henry Gault, her... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151001723
• ISBN13: 9780151001729
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.3" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

A very worthwhile read!

A strange novel set in Virginia in the mid 1950's to early '60's. The rural class structure is in place, while the incipient apartheid society is being challenged with the civil rights movement. The novel deftly contrasts racism and classicism that was (and probably still is) existent in rural Virginia. The heroine, Penny Bone, is alone - - her husband having been sent to prison for manslaughter that was the result of his throwing a full beer bottle out of a car and hitting a Negro teenage girl who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. John Bone ends up in jail primarily because he is poverty stricken and uneducated. The town where the Bones lived is haunted by the long-ago disappearance of the first Negro child to integrate the town's school. This disappearance is attributed to the 'Gypsy Man', a local legend who supposedly kidnaps and kills children. Penny fears that the Gypsy Man will take Tory, the only thing she has from her brief marriage to John before he went to jail. The book turns on the contrast of classism and racism and whether or not the Gypsy Man does or does not exist. It is a slow moving book that turns out to be totally absorbing. The questions about class and race and balance of power and what people will do to maintain the balance will remain with you for quite a while. This book would never make a best seller list, but it would be wonderful if many people read it. Worth your time and interest.

The Gypsy Man

Robert Bausch has created vivid three dimentional characters caught in their own lives. The Gypsy Man is not based on a gypsy from Romany, but on the collected beliefs of an entire community. This is a heck of a read.... Gypsy Man far surpasses any of Bausch's previous works. This book is intriguing in its plot twists, its development of distinctive but believable characters, and the style of writing. This book is for readers who want to read a novel for plain entertainment or for those looking for a real piece of literature. He is an author to keep an eye on. I can hardly wait for Bob Bausch's next book!

Portrait of love and fear in many voices

Set in the rural Kentucky mountaintop community of Crawford in 1959, Bausch?s multi-narrated novel goes to the heart of love, deceit, dashed dreams and hope. Penny Bone, who lives with her daughter and her Aunt Clare, but who?s really been on her own a long time, centers the novel with her strong, young voice, a voice so strong people don?t see the fear at her core. As the story opens, Penny?s Aunt Clare is missing and her 7-year-old daughter, Tory, unearths some writing on a white stone at the edge of their yard. A gravestone, perhaps.Penny latches onto the stone as a focus for her fears. Her mother died when she was a baby and her father was killed in the war when she was 11. Raised by Clare, who is subject to benders and running off with men, Penny learned self-reliance before she knew what it was. She met John Bone in Crawford?s tiny school, married at 17 and lost him by the time her daughter was born. Not that John Bone is dead. John accidentally killed a girl and got 20 years for manslaughter. Penny recalls: ?When they took him away he says, ?I?m dead to you, and you got to be dead to me.? ? And now Clare?s been missing for weeks, longer than she?s ever been gone before.?After a while, even with Tory sitting next to me and chattering about the stone, I felt kind of lonely and sad. It seemed like the air I inhaled could spread out anywhere in my body, and make me cold and afraid at the same time. I can?t explain it. I wanted a car to come. Somebody I knew to get out and visit for a spell.?The narration switches to John Bone, feeling the first stirrings of hope he?s allowed himself in six years. During a jail break-out, when he could have run, he saved a guard?s life instead. There?s talk of doing something for him in return. But the man who did escape, Peach, a thoroughly chilling psychopath, had once for treasure up at the old Crawford place at the top of the mountain, near where Penny lives, and Bone worries he?s headed back there.Back in Crawford, Penny?s friend Morgan, an old man who can remember the last of the Crawfords, the one who became the Gypsy Man, worries over the signs he?s seeing of the Gypsy Man?s return. Born with a birthmark that blighted half his face, kidnapped, supposedly by Gypsies, as a toddler, then returned a few years later, the last Crawford became a fire bug. Though he was nearly 50 when he disappeared for good 40 years before, people still blame the Gypsy Man whenever there?s a fire or a missing child. The last child to go missing still haunts the community ? a boy from the black enclave further down the mountain, he was the first to integrate Crawford?s school and the sheriff still looks for him. Now Morgan?s seeing the signs again and Penny?s after him to help her dig out that white stone.When Clare shows up, beaten and evasive, her house key missing, the reader knows it?s Peach she?s been with, and the sinister undertone takes on an edge of dread. The narrative shifts among the varied voices of the characters

wow - Oprah never steers you wrong!

I loved this book. I'd classify it as "spooky literature", it was a great story well told. Bausch loves his characters and it shines through on every page. I finished it a week ago and I'm still thinking about it!

Another triumph for Bausch

Kudos to Robert Bausch for another fine novel following his strong selling A HOLE IN THE EARTH. THE GYPSY MAN is astoundingly different: a literary thriller set in the 1950's. Told from multiple - one might even say numerous - points-of-view, the novel constructs life in the Virginia mountains in a small mill town called Crawford. Legend has it that the woods around Crawford are frequented by a disfigured man nicknamed the Gypsy Man who steals small children and sets fires. The last time he struck, a black boy named Terry Landon disappeared; six years later the town is still grieving. When old Morgan Tiller finds signs that the Gypsy Man has returned, the person who worries most is Penny Bone, a woman with a six year old daughter and a husband in prison. Her Aunt Clare is missing, and she is convinced that this is the work of the Gypsy Man. From this auspicious start, the tension only increases as the reader begins the see the impending danger to all.The plot is complicated, and giving away anymore of it might spoil the enjoyment of a riveting read. Bausch's use of many voices - from John Bone in prison for manslaughter, to Gault the town's teacher and lawyer, to Aunt Clare, to the volatile escaped convict Peach, to name only a small fraction - reveals the truth in pieces, even if the characters themselves cannot see it. Penny is the spiritual center of the novel since she has both the most to lose and the most to gain, but even she cannot rightfully be called the protagonist. THE GYPSY MAN is a mosaic that can only be seen clearly at a distance and with all the pieces in place.THE GYPSY MAN is not a flawless book. Some of the exchanges go on for too long, with little or no information conveyed. Bausch's insistence on using first person narration for all sections often leads to confusion, especially after a lengthy passage when the reader has had a chance to identify the "I" with a particular character. Despite these lapses, you won't want to miss the thrill of reading this novel. The storytelling is superb, the characterizations wonderful, and the prose well-written. What more could you want?I highly recommend this book for anyone who reads fiction. Bausch fans will want to snap this up right away, to be among the first to read it. Newcomers won't regret their introduction to this gifted novelist.