When you were older (by Catherine Ryan Hyde)

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I have liked all the novels I’ve read by Catherine Ryan Hyde over the past eighteen years since I first came across one of her books. The writing is always good, with believable characters, and they’re all very different. 

So when I started reading ‘When you were older’ a few days ago, I had no idea that it was set exactly 24 years ago, in September 2001. And while it’s not a short book - nearly 400 pages in paperback - I found it compulsive reading. So I finished it today, the anniversary of the attacks on the twin towers in New York; and that event is the catalyst for most of this novel, which was published originally in 2012. 

Russell is the main character of the book. It’s quite unusual, in my experience, for a woman writer to use a male character as the main viewpoint in a novel. Even more so when he’s narrating in the first person. But Catherine Ryan Hyde has created a believable and very likable young man whom I warmed to quickly. 

The first chapter is dated September 15th, four days after the towers fell. Russell wakes up feeling disorientated, in a bed that’s not his own, to see his brother - whom he hasn’t seen in six years - towering over him. Ben is older than Russell, but it’s clear from the start that he has special needs - it turns out he had brain damage many years earlier. 

Russell had been employed in New York, in one of the towers; but an urgent phone call made him late, so he survived. The phone call was letting him know that his mother had died suddenly, and that he needed to get back to Kansas. And then he no longer had a job, or any colleagues. He had to hitch-hike to Kansas, and he’s deeply in shock. But Ben (whom I thought, at first, was autistic) thrives on routine. And he needs Russell to drive him to the supermarket where he works as a bagger. 

So Russell has to learn, quickly, how to look after his brother. There are some flashbacks to his early childhood, where Ben was a terrible bully; somehow he has become much nicer since his accident, albeit prone to tantrums and misunderstandings. Ben hasn’t really grasped that their mother is not returning, and he doesn’t begin to understand how traumatised Russell is. 

And there’s Anat, the beautiful Egyptian-American girl who works in a local bakery which is owned by her father. Russell goes there initially to buy something for breakfast, and is very quickly smitten. He’s not sure if she feels the same way and he knows he has to tread carefully as her father is quite strict. And because they’re Egyptian - albeit naturalised Americans - some of the local populace decide to attack the bakery. Initially just with paint graffiti, but it gradually becomes worse.

The writing is very powerful, and I felt myself totally drawn into the story. The love story is very gentle, and all the more moving as a result. And there are underlying themes that are quite thought-provoking, demonstrating how one single decision or step can have far-reaching, sometimes devastating consequences. If Russell had decided not to answer his phone on that fatal date, for instance, he would not have been around to tell the story. Other decisions made in the course of the book have more negative consequences. 

There are also strong pointers about the importance of being totally honest with our loved ones, while also sometimes needing to be diplomatic. Some readers might object to the way the author shows that extreme nationalism can be dangerous, and that ongoing wars simply serve to hurt more and more people. But she doesn't moralise; instead, she expresses this in conversation, in Russell’s own convictions and questions, and in the way that the kind, gentle Egyptian pair are targeted for all the wrong reasons.

I read the last third of the book almost in one sitting, as I could hardly put it down. The whole story takes place over the course of just three months (plus flashbacks to Russell and Ben’s childhood) but by the end I was feeling both moved and slightly drained. Parts of this story will probably stay with me for a while.

Highly recommended. 

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