The Boy in the Field by Margot Livesy

The Boy in the Field by Margot Livesy is a novel that is ostensibly a mystery about a boy discovered in a field (duh!) by three siblings.  He has been stabbed and appears unconscious.  The story is told from the revolving viewpoints of the siblings, Matthew (18 years old), Zoe (about to turn 16), and Duncan (12), and is really more about the impact the discovery has on their maturing lives.  Matthew is the most interested in finding the assailant, occasionally calling on the police detective assigned the case, amidst the soap-opera-link turmoil of his latest romance.  Zoe is a somewhat prototypical teenage girl, rejecting boys her own age, dreaming of a soulmate, though her imagined out-of-body experiences are probably a little unusual.  Duncan is a sensitive boy, an artist forever sketching and painting.  He was adopted as a baby, and for some reason, the boy in the field triggers a longing to find his birth mother - just to talk to her once, he explains to his mother.

The parents are unaware of the impact the discovery has had on their children. The mother seems obsessed with learning ancient Greek, and the father, more dangerously, is engaged in an affair with another woman.  The children also find out about the affair, and wonder what it will mean for the future of their family.  Matthew gets embroiled in a search for the perpetrator of the assault by the victim’s brother, Tomas, who is also a pseudo-suspect in the case.   The victim, Karel, is now recovered, but remains afraid of his older sibling.   It turns out Karel was threatened by his brother in the past, who was jealous about the attention his fiance was doling out.  Matthew and Tomas embark on an amateurish canvassing of the neighbourhood, looking for the attacker and his car.  Zoe has set her sights on a twenty-something man she meets in the city of Oxford, and despite not knowing his name or much about him, manages to run into him two additional times and successfully carry out a seduction in an inimitable, coquettish fashion.  It was definitely somewhat uncomfortable to follow this burgeoning relationship, one that in my opinion comes dangerously too close to forbidden.  Perhaps the thinking in Europe is more relaxed, though Zoe is careful to keep it hidden from her parents and siblings.  

With his parents’ support and help, Duncan begins a search for his birth mother,  All in the family wonder what the long term impact will be.  They only know her name, but since it is Turkish, they find there are not many matches in the London phonebook.  Of course, on the second-two-last phone call, the birth mother is found.  Duncan speaks to her, and the reader is relieved to find that she is quite nice, not needy or angry, and posits a non-invasive follow up.  This is definitely a novel which will not end badly.

Disappointingly, the Karel’s mystery assailant is identified and arrested by virtue of a coincidental car-scooter accident involving one of Zoe’s ex-boyfriends.  The automobile turns out to be the very same one that picked up the hitchhiking Karel.  The assault, in turns out, was not sexual, but simply a panicked reaction of a confused, lonely man.  Now that this is resolved, attention returns to the daily dramas being played out.  Zoe discovers her new beau is having another affair with a married woman.  He goes off for a weekend with her, leaving Zoe to ponder if this is the end.  Meanwhile, Duncan overhears a conversation between his father and his mistress, in which she informs him of her surprise pregnancy.  In the final scene of the novel, set at a community party, Duncan meets with his birth mother and Zoe’s man shows up at the last second.

The remaining plot threads, such as they are, are mostly closed in an epilogue depicting a family reunion sixteen years later.  The event is Duncan’s graduate show, where he is displaying six paintings he has worked painstakingly on.  Matthew arrives from London, where he is a financial analyst, no detective badge in sight, though the apparent plan is to make money for ten years, then retire to an occupation he really wants to follow.  Zoe returns alone from the U.S. where she is living with Rufus and going to school.  She is sensing that the relationship is finally coming to an end.  

Two years earlier, they had been informed that Karel had committed suicide, an outcome that he had hinted at in his few words of dialogue.  Matthew is the first to voice his thought that Duncan’s paintings are in some way representative of “the boy in the field”.  The paintings themselves are barely described, a swatch of colour here or there, but one senses that they are abstract. 

The parents arrive, and the reader is filled in on the outcome of the affair and pregnancy.  The two have reconciled and the father’s new daughter is part of their life.  Once again, all is resolved a little too neatly.

All in all, this was a very well written and enjoyable piece of writing.  Okay, a bit too much soap opera, and the focus on sexual desire as a plot driver was ever present.  However, it was appreciated that the author did not attempt to describe anything explicit.

The reader is left with one unanswered mystery.  Karel said one word while semi-unconscious in the field, and each of the siblings heard something different.

“Coward” - does this propel Matthew into his erstwhile detection gigi?

“Cowrie” (sea shell) - the word implies protection, perhaps goading the rebellious Zoe in the opposite direction.

“Cowslip” (a flower) - is Duncan just looking for beauty as always?