Navigating Early

Written by Clare Vanderpool, Navigating Early is a touching novel, whose narrative is constructed by a surplus of parallels and allegories. The frequent mix of fantasy and reality, however, doesn’t quite land, as it relies heavily on bizarre coincidences to work.

The story takes place in 1945, following a trip two boys undertake through a forest in Maine. Jackie, the protagonist, is a 13-year-old boy who has just lost his mother and is put in a military school by his father. There, he meets a weird boy named Early Auden, and a friendship starts. During Christmas, Early invites Jackie to go on an adventure with him. Jackie, feeling alone, accepts.

Although Jackie is the protagonist, Early is the most interesting character in the book. He’s a gifted boy that knows by heart more than one hundred digits of the number Pi, but suffers from something akin to Asperger’s syndrome, having a hard time making pragmatic inferences. He’s highly methodical, listening to only certain musicians each day of the week (Louis Armstrong on Mondays and Sinatra on Wednesdays, for example), and obsessive, thinking all the time about his mind-boggling plan to find out the true whereabouts of his brother, who – he was told – was killed during World War II.

The big theme of Navigating Early is the difficulty in accepting the departure of a loved one. Jackie lost his mother, which made him angry at the world and hate his father. Early, on the other hand, downright refuses to accept his brother’s death and creates a whole narrative to help him process the event.

The narrative moves between the real and the fantastic at rapid speed. Early, for example, researches how the weather was the day his brother died and proceeds to mix the data with personal opinions – he thought his brother a great swimmer – to try to defend that the fatality was a highly improbable event. His brother must be alive somewhere. So Early begins to see in the digits of Pi whole stories and characters that, when analyzed by him, supposedly reveal his brother’s true whereabouts. He wants to repeat Pi’s journey around the world – as it is secretly written in the digits of the number – and invites Jackie to go alongside him in a rowboat.

Early is depicted as a boy of impossible dreams: in his first scene, Jackie is watching him trying to build a sand wall on a beach to contain the whole ocean. The narrative is structured to gradually reveal his conflicts and personality, which is already pointed out by the ambiguity of the book’s title, Navigating Early. The protagonist agrees to keep his friend company because he’s feeling alone and empathizes with his pain. Jackie also feels lost, trying to find a direction in life, without success. Early, then, serves as his guide in life, which is reflected in his position on their boat: the protagonist rows the boat following Early’s directions.

Their journey through the forest is full of adventures, with encounters with pirates, bears, and mysterious characters. Meanwhile, Early keeps telling Jackie the story of Pi, which, being essentially allegorical, has an intrinsic relationship to what’s happening around them. The problem with this idea is that, in many cases, Early, living up to his name, tells the story of Pi prior to the events that will mirror it: his allegorical story often precedes reality. In other words, the boy ends up predicting the future.

The author makes a point of establishing an aura of mysticism around the character, putting him saying the same lines as Jackie’s mother, for instance, and suddenly disappearing as soon as the protagonist notices the coincidence. This supernatural aura is eventually abandoned, however, since Early is, in the end, just a boy. This is hardly a twist: after all, it is obvious from the start that he has no paranormal abilities – what makes such moments of suspense and mystery feel artificial as soon as they appear, never obscuring the fact that they are just a means for Vanderpool to build some level of tension.

This disconnection between fantasy and reality occurs throughout the entire book, which is ironic, as Pi’s magical story keeps blending itself with Early and Jackie’s journey. In the end, there is a paradox in the narrative of Navigating Early: if, on the one hand, it is entirely structured around the confusion between what’s real and what’s just Early’s imagination, on the other, the implausibility of the links between the two spheres reinforce the division between them. Early keeps tying fantasy and reality together while the narrative keeps separating them, failing to blend them in a way that is not absurd.

When coincidences begin to become frequent, for example, we end up questioning their nature rather than accept the events and move on. There is a scene in Pi’s story in which the character encounters a lady who confuses him with her lost son. Shortly after telling this tale to his friend, Early comes across a lady who confuses Jackie with her lost son. The coincidence, then, assumes a false, artificial tone. In the novel, the imaginary often spills over into reality, although it’s never fully accepted by it: Early is not magical, their world is not magical, and all events are explained rationally. Nonetheless, the boy predicts the future in rich detail. Even the flavor of the lady’s son’s favorite jelly matches Jackie’s.

Vanderpool, at least, uses these coincidences to create some interesting parallels: while the forest lady lost her son, Jackie lost his mother, so they complete each other. However, the structure of the book becomes repetitive due to the frequency of this kind of situation: Pi’s journey coincides in detail with Jackie’s and, since Pi represents Early’s brother, Jackie ends up assuming the same role. This means that in each chapter there is always some coincidence that connects both characters to reinforce the nature of Jackie’s relationship with his friend. Sadly, the story doesn’t seem to care about how inexplicable that coincidence might be; the important thing is just to make the parallel.

The book’s climax represents the pinnacle of this problem: it is an amalgamation of revelations that confirm Early as the ultimate prophet, whose predictions, even when arbitrary and illogical, always come true.

Finally, one element that is developed well in the novel is Early’s ability to see colors and textures in numbers. At one point, for example, he only sees zeros in Pi’s story and, since it was already established that zeros look like blood to him, a charge of tension — this time organic — is injected into the narrative.

Navigating Early tells a story about loss and love, about finding your true north with the help of a friend. It’s a shame, then, that the book shows such disregard for its internal consistency, delivering a story that, although poignant at times, often reminds the reader of its own artificiality.

October 07, 2019.

Review originally published in Portuguese on April 01, 2017.