A Door in the Ocean

August 6, 2012
When McGlynnâs close friend and high school swim teammate Jeremy is murdered "execution-style" on a fall evening in Texas in 1991, the young man is left floundering to make sense of the tragedy. In this heartfelt coming-of-age memoir, McGlynn (The End of the Straight and Narrow, a story collection) details his emotionally grueling journey. Of the days before the killing, he writes that "It was the last time ordinariness would feel, well, ordinary." McGlynn candidly explores his struggle to come to terms with his own shameful revelry in the resulting attention lavished upon him by classmates and the likelihood that the crime would go unsolved, and describes his eventual adherence to evangelical Christianity, whereupon he took a vow of celibacy and assumed the mantle of missionary. McGlynn recounts his ongoing commitment to swimming (he describes "the water like a drug") and his constant wrestling with his faith, but after another tragedy, he would find himself searching yet again. Although the narrative is slowed by extraneous detail, McGlynn is an astute observer of relationships, and proffers insightful commentary on the power of memory to simultaneously burden and enrich the present. Beyond that, the sheer ease of his prose and the honesty of his journey are enough to keep readers moved and moving.