Sipsworth is noble, good-humored and loving. Also, Sipsworth is a mouse.
He — Sipsworth seems to be a "he," but maybe not — is one of two main characters. Simon Van Booy's wry, heartfelt novel has a few subsidiary characters, but it's almost entirely about elderly, lonely Helen Cartwright and a mouse she inadvertently introduces into her home, plans to dispose of and accidentally falls in love with.
"Sipsworth" is intended for adults, but it's no surprise to learn Van Booy has written for young people. The motivations of the characters — Helen, in particular — are nuanced and only gradually revealed, but the writing is pure and unadorned. It's as if Van Booy knows his "Stuart Little"-like subject matter requires suspension of disbelief (it also requires forgetting that you may have used glue traps in the past). But he wants it to be understood that it is possible for there to be love between a human and, let's face it, vermin.
In the way a children's book invites readers to draw conclusions about what they're seeing, "Sipsworth" is sometimes fragmentary, with Van Booy confident that, for instance, his clues about a movie Helen watches will help us figure out the title (it's "The Wizard of Oz," another tale in which the concept of home morphs from prison to haven).
Helen, too, is elusive at first. We know she has experienced loss and has newly resettled in England after many years in Australia, but that's about it, initially. She seems like many old women you might see at a library or in a cafe — and, in a way, she is. But she also has dimensions that are hidden by her fuzzy slippers and lack of human contact. The more we learn about Helen, the funnier and more formidable she becomes.
Sipsworth is more of a blank slate, on whom Helen (and readers) project the things I mentioned in the first paragraph of this review. The book adopts Helen's attitude toward the mouse and, often, when she's describing him, it's also clear she's describing herself: "The lonely creature is likely frightened, stranded there in a sitting room on Westminster Crescent, unaware there is someone listening, someone watching beyond the small, dark place it has come to live out the last of its days."
Van Booy never leans too hard on that sort of thing. It's there for us to notice or not in a book that is very much about two creatures helping each other heal (in an afterword, Van Booy notes that he wrote the book in a hospital).
It's the sort of book you may have read before, in which two strangers turn out to be just what the other needs. But in its quiet, loving way, "Sipsworth" feels as rare and special as a friend.
Sipsworth
By: Simon Van Booy.
Publisher: Godine, 220 pages, $26.95.
