My Two Cents: THE BLURRY MAN by Jenny Toupin

Based on real-life events, The Blurry Man by Jenny Toupin centers around Anthony Morozov, a bright but odd and reclusive young man. He foregoes a budding career as a college instructor and instead begins cataloging headstones at the local cemetery as part of a project for the local newspaper. It is here one day that he finds Holly, a traumatized little girl hiding in one of the old crypts. Rather than deliver her to the police, Anthony instead brings the girl home. He decides to raise her like a daughter, and lavishes on her all of the attention and love his own childhood lacked. In return, she gives him a much-needed sense of purpose.

Throughout Anthony's life, strange events like these seem commonplace. In his youth, for example, he stumbles upon a funeral, and unwittingly finds himself taking part in the family's mourning rituals. He feels a strange connection to the dead girl, Natali, and over the subsequent decades that follow, he imagines her ghost drifting in and out of his life as both companion and tormentor.

Toupin presents Anthony as troubled and desperately lonely, in search for a family he can call his own. He seems to have found this, and happiness besides, with Holly. Later, another girl, Abby, joins their makeshift family, and Anthony at last feels like the holes in his heart have been filled. The truth isn't this sweet, or simple, however. In fact, it's rather horrifying.

The Blurry Man is well-written, and Toupin does a terrific job playing her cards close to the vest in terms of the plot. You sense the twist at the end coming long before it arrives, but not exactly what--or how twisted--it is.

As a warning: The first chapter involves SA against a child. "The Blurry Man" is the name Anthony gives the man who assaults him, but the book isn't about that person in the end. It turns out that Anthony himself is the true "blurry man," because the world he perceives isn't clear-cut or real. He only sees what he wants to, and through Toupin's tale, that's what we as the reader are left to see, too: a fascinating portrait of an unreliable, but not entirely unlikable narrator, someone whose mental illness, once revealed, is as deeply unsettling as the deplorable act he suffers in those initial scenes.

The Blurry Man is available here.