A Runaway’s Curious Adventures

On the morning that 8-year-old Noah Barleywater runs away, before he has gotten very far, an oddly short man pushing a cat in a wheelbarrow accuses him of making him late for a veterinary appointment. “If that happens, my cat is sure to die. And it will be all your fault. You really are a monstrous little boy.”

And so, darkly, begins “Noah Barleywater Runs Away,” the most recent book by John Boyne (“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”). The story, part adventure, part fairy tale, part coming-of-age, is an unusual one, told largely by a mysterious old toymaker to a precocious little boy who has set out to “make his own way in the world” despite the efforts of “a great blanket of happy memories trying to break through and smother the fresher, sadder ones.” Fleeing the man, Noah finds himself at a mysterious toyshop filled with murmuring wooden puppets. Not one other person has ever entered this shop, he is told by the elderly proprietor. “Perhaps you were sent here for a reason.”

Together, tentatively, surrounded by inanimate objects — toys, doors, stairs and mirrors — that periodically offer comments, they tell each other their stories.

“Aren’t you running away from home because you’re being bullied?”

But no, it turns out. Noah has many good friends and does quite well in school. ­Seventh-cleverest boy in a class of 30.

“I suppose it was your family, then.”

No, he has a wonderful family, as it happens. Recently, his mother was so thrilled by Noah’s success at pinball (a score of 4,500,000!) that she looked around excitedly for a new adventure, insisting, “You only live once.” Cue, foreshadowing: Their time together is short. Meanwhile, the toymaker’s childhood, each aspect brought to mind by an intricately carved puppet, was a series of huge successes. He could run faster than anyone! Beating the bully, Toby Lovely, who beat him black and blue, was nothing compared with his victories at all the village races. He ran with royalty! He ran in the Olympics!

“You will come back to me, won’t you?” his Poppa asked, as he headed off for yet another race. “Do you promise?”

“Yes, yes,” the toymaker recalls telling his father at the time, “scarcely even thinking about whether I meant it or not.”

“I’ve had to live with a broken promise all my life,” the toymaker confides to Noah.

He had received a letter, while off racing, telling him that his father was very ill.

“Did you get there in time? Did you get home before he . . . before anything. . . .”

“Before he died?” the old man said. “Can’t you say the word?”

Noah Barleywater returns home before the day’s end, to face his mother’s impending death. The toymaker, whose Poppa had been named Geppetto, returns to his carving, trying sadly once again to recreate his former self. In this charming and cleverly plotted story that tiptoes with humor and compassion, two characters teach each other how to grieve, how to forgive, and how, eventually, to remember what has been lost.

Link: NYTIMES