Before My Eyes is a powerful young adult novel about a fateful summer’s end in the fictional Long Island town of Lakeshore, New York. Following on the path of her acclaimed debut young adult novel, LIE, Bock brings forth complex characters in  nuanced, descriptive language, layering relevant contemporary themes: Gun violence, mental illness, prescription drug abuse, and internet risks with timeless themes of love and hope. Before My Eyes captures a moment when possibilities should be opening up, but instead everything teeters on the brink of destruction. 

 

Before My Eyes unfolds in the tightly woven first person narratives of Claire, Max and Barkley. Claire has spent the last few months taking care of her six-year-old sister, Izzy, as their mother lies in a hospital bed. Claire believes she has everything under control until she meets a young man online who appears to be a kindred spirit. She is initially flattered by the attention but when she meets Max, the shy state senator’s son, her feelings become complicated. Working alongside Max at a beachfront food stand is Barkley. Lonely and obsessive, Barkley has been hearing a dangerous voice in his head.  No one—not his parents, not his co-workers—realize that Barkley is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, until the voice in his head orders him to do the unthinkable.

 

What is seen/unseen, concealed/unconcealed, and ultimately known/unknown layers this richly metaphorical text, and along with the deeply felt characters, makes Before My Eyes a novel that teens and their adults will be eager to read, discuss, and analyze

 

The setting is critical to understanding how the author of Before My Eyes structured the text in order to build suspense and develop multi-dimensional characters. Here follows insight into the setting:

 

Place: The town of Lakeshore in Long Island, New York, about thirty miles east of New York City during the end of a simmering hot summer. The majority of the novel takes place at the fictional Lakeshore town and at its town beach along the Atlantic Ocean on the southern shore of Long Island. In New York, state parks, most notably, Jones Beach, are open to all for a modest fee. However, as is commonplace, there are more exclusive ‘town’ beaches where one must be a resident in order to use a beach, and that is the case with this setting. This exclusive town beach gives the teens the illusion of safety and security.

 

Time: The novel opens on Labor Day Monday at a community park in Lakeshore at an event for state senator Glenn Cooper, who is running for re-election and is the father of Max Cooper. Barkley, suffering from what we will soon understand to be paranoid schizophrenia, is outside the tent—a gun concealed in his sweatshirt. Max is insider the tent. The foreshadowing is there in the text—there is going to be tragic confrontation—but who are these two young men? And who is the girl, Claire, that they are both waiting to see will also appear? After these two short chapters, the novel will flashback to the Thursday prior and follow our three main characters—Barkley, Max and Claire—back to this fateful day, and one day beyond for a total of six critical days in the lives of these three teens. Day and times are marked at the head of each chapter in order to give the reader a sense that every moment of life is critical.

 

 

 

Three first-person points of view comprise this novel: Barkley, Max and Claire. One of the central metaphors of Before My Eyes is the idea of what is before ones eyes is often not seen at all and not understood. These characters are each hiding things—often from their parents, their friends, and themselves. To extend the metaphor of what is seen or not seen in the novel, a student should analyze these complex characters by looking closely at textual details. Here is a short description of each character:

 

BARKLEY -- is a twenty-one year old, drop out from community college, a would-be filmmaker and environmentalist and grammar fanatic. He is also suffering from undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenia. He is obsessed with Claire. His parents do not “see” what is happening to him, though they know something is wrong and are in conflict with him over his behavior and what to do to help. Special note: most of the scenes between Barkley and his parents,happen with Barkley behind his closed bedroom door, and his parents pacing on the other side. No one “sees” that right before his or her eyes, Barkley is losing touch with reality, texting the Max's father, a state senator running for re-election, and hearing a voice in his head. He spends hours in his room on video games, on the internet, drinking coffee, not sleeping, not bathing. 

 

MAX --is about to turn eighteen years old as the novel opens. He is the son of New York state senator Glenn Cooper and his campaign manager and wife, Debbi Cooper. He has spent his summer working at the Snack Shack at the town beach and obsessing about a missed penalty kick in the last soccer game of the year and the seemingly unattainable girls in bikinis on the beach.  He is also using his father’s prescription pain medicine to dull his imagined physical and psychological pain. Notably, Max has a dog, King, a blind dog, and it’s this brave dog who plays a pivotal role in the action of the novel.  To sum up, on the surface, Max has everything going for him—loving parents, nice car, senior year, but he hides and conceals his prescription pain medicine drug abuse—and his despair.

 

  

CLAIRE— seventeen-year old Claire has been taking care of her six-year                    old sister, Izzy, short for Elizabeth ever since her mother suffered an aneurysm earlier in the spring. With her father barely able to cope—emotionally or financially—with his wife’s rehabilitation he does not notice or “see” the sadness overcoming his dreamy, literary elder daughter Claire. She turns to the Internet to blog her poetry. Online she meets “Brent,” who is in truth “Barkley,” but she doesn’t “see” this until it is almost too late. Claire conceals her unhappiness from everyone—even in a key scene, diving into the ocean and being caught by an unseen riptide, and almost drowns, a foreshadow of her own hidden fate. Ultimately, it is Claire who uncovers or sees clearly what she must do—to face life or death, and to find love.

 

A wide cross section of research and outside sources were consulted in order to develop realistic, complex characters and themes.

  

The novel was inspired in part by a true event: I was taken aback by what happened in Tucson, Arizona on January 8, 2011, the day U.S. representative Gabrielle Giffords and eighteen others were shot during a meeting at local supermarket  Six people died, and many others were injured by Jared Loughner, a 22-year old Tucson man. I followed this case closely in news reports, shocked and angry, before I began to write this novel.        

 In addition, key outside sources and research was utilized to write this novel.

On a personal level, the novel was reviewed by Dr. Frances Bock, PhD, a neuropsychologist, and by David Blech, a nurse practitioner with experience working with psychiatric, particularly young male schizophrenics. Both are close relatives of the author and offered a careful reading of early drafts of the novel in order to help shape Barkley’s story. In addition, many books and websites regarding mental illness in teens, most notably the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), were consulted.

 

Research on gun violence and gun control in the United States, a controversial subject under much debate in our society, was also critical. The websites of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Sensible Gun Control were also researched for key points on gun violence and young people. And while a novel is by its very nature not a work of journalistic balance, but a subjective story of people and their actions, I also considered the other side of the debate, those that advocate for gun owners, The National Rifle Association.

 

Ultimately, the background research done on this novel should only serves to enrich the character’s lives and situations, and I hope this research lends to the richness and complexity of Before My Eyes.

 

 

1. Analyze how these complex characters—Barkley, Max, and Claire— each with multiple or conflicting motivations, develop over the course of the novel? How do they interact with one another? How do they each contribute or develop the overall theme of the novel?                             

2. In particular, is there a point in the novel in which one can express empathy for Barkley (i.e. it is both implied and inferred that he has been bulled throughout high school and that he has been exhibiting signs of mental illness for several years)? But how does the author pivot the reader’s empathy away from Barkley toward Max and/or Claire?   

            

3.  What inferences can be drawn by the opening two chapters of the novel? How does setting the novel up in the present time, and then flashing back, to the past add suspense to the novel?  How does the reader infer the mental states of Barkley and Max at the beginning of the time, citing specific textual references.

                                                                         

4. How does the title, Before My Eyes, describe a central metaphor or idea in the text? How does it emerge and shapes the text through the characters and what they see or hide, what they conceal or reveal, to their parents and peers?  Suggested activity: Have the students closely analyzed each of the main characters and create a chart or character map that cites specific textual references on what is seen/not seen or unconcealed/hidden or unknown/known by parents and peers.                                           

5. Claire writes poetry—several poems are included in her sections in the novel. She results as a result of the loneliness, and ultimately, out of the anger she feels. Look at the poems closely? What are the central ideas in the poems and how do they relate to the larger themes of the novel?  Suggested activity: have students write their poems inspired by the novel and/or building on the metaphor of what is seen/unseen about them or their world. (Special note to teachers from the author: I was the editor of my high school literary magazine, Opus, at New Rochelle High School in New Rochelle, New York and referred to back issues to remember how it was to write as a seventeen year old, and to write Claire’s poetry.)

 

6.  The novel infers a particular point of view on gun violence and the mentally ill, without being pedantic or a “message” novel. Read the text closely (particularly the end chapters) and discuss what is that point of view expressed? What role does Claire’s mother, a psychologist, serve at the end of the novel? Compare and contrast the different reactions of Claire and Max to the gun violence.  Suggested activity: In an essay that researches and cites outside sources as well as specific textual references from the novel, the student’s write their own response to the issue of gun violence in America.

 

7. The novel ends on a Tuesday afternoon, with the reference that the next day, Wednesday, school starts. Suggested activity: In a creative essay, which builds on textual references and analysis of each character, have the students describe what happens on that Wednesday either writing in the character’s point of view or writing an analytical essay about what should or could happen.       

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Special note on the first print edition of Before My Eyes: Erratum, an error in printing or writing. The error is in the writing and the author takes full responsibility. A quote attributed on p. 169 to Lewis Carroll, “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream,” is in fact attributable to Edgar Allan Poe from his poem, ”A Dream Within A Dream.” I trust the publisher will correct this in subsequent print editions. 

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