Randolph Woman’s Novel Explores

Family—Through a Child’s Eyes

By M. D. Drysdale

"Buttons" is my kind of novel. Its only 93 pages long, but boy does it pack an emotional wallop.

It was 23 years ago that Carol Greene of Randolph was inspired to write this haunting tale of a young girl trying desperately to pull her fractured family back together. It was 17 years ago that she actually wrote the book and started sending it out to publishers.

The publishers, though, had a problem with a 93-page novel. It didn’t fit in any of their marketing boxes, but over the years Greene collected "twelve of the warmest rejection letters," she said in a Herald interview last week.

So finally Greene turned to the self-publishing-on-demand industry and published the book herself last month, both in softcover and hardcover.

Greene is celebrating the event with a book-signing party at Cover-to-Cover tomorrow, Friday the 23rd from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

"Buttons" is a short novel but in no way is it slight. It builds on timeless family themes—father/ daughter, mother/daughter, father/mother. Written from the vantage point of a young girl, who is never named (nor is her age), the narrative carries a kind of winsome innocence into a world that is far from innocent.

The novella is also masterfully crafted. It occurs in the space of just three days, three days filled with anticipation, disappointment and dark forboding that build to a fine climax that is at once realistic and deeply rewarding.

In a sense, nothing of note really happens in "Buttons." In another sense, everything happens that should happen, and a little girl’s clear and expectant vision clarifies a great deal that we need to know about each other.

Partly a Life Story

Greene told The Herald that "Buttons" is indeed partly autobiographical. She grew up in a family of nine children, and like the "Buttons" narrator, she found herself largely in charge of the younger children at age 11. Her parents’ marriage was in trouble at that time, and they divorced when she was 23.

The novel is "based on my way of looking at the world when growing up," she said.

But her challenge was "to choose which strands of my life harmonize, in order to make the story more universal."

Her main motivation, she said, was "a strong need for adults to remember their old childhoods—and for children to know thay are not alone."

Another theme is the importance of fathers.

"I poured myself into the idea of the importance of fathers to their children," Greene said. "Fathers don’t know how much they are needed by their children. So they do careless, thoughtless things.

"For every little girl I know, the father looms large."

And so does the father in "Buttons," a distant man whose every movement and glance resonates through the household—sometimes, it must be said, in a threatening way.

Greene has done a lot of thinking about parents and children. She does not present any solutions in "Buttons," but she has some strong opinions.

"Grownups should risk looking foolish" in front of their children, she declared. They should be able to talk about earlier experiences in which they were not in control, or made bad decisions, and how they dealt with the situations, and how they ended up.

"That sharing of common experience builds trust between child and parent," she declared. "Too much of the time we want to look so good before our children. But kids need more than that. They need to hear their parents’ stories."

So "Buttons" is a parent’s story from childhood. In the book Carol Greene doesn’t preach, but she sees so vividly through the eyes of a child. In the seeing and in the telling, she creates a world that lingers long after the 93 pages have been turned.