Only and Ever This by J.A. Tyler

We are pirates, we are ghosts—a transcendent magic realist novel on family, sadness, and regret.

Two twin boys live in a township where it’s always raining. Or it feels like it is. Where the water meets the land, where fathers drift off to sea to let their ghostly mothers raise their kids.

These twins dream of peg legs, of hooks for hands, of rubies—of the wide open ocean—while their father captains ship after ship, seeking immortality. The twins hide their avasts and ahoys from their mother, who’s disappearing more with each day, dreaming that their kids won’t one day leave her too.

But the allure of piracy is too strong. The blood is too thick and too black. The twins bike to the arcade, find tunnels beneath the floorboards, and don’t let the sight of skeletons in chains stop them. Over time, the twins both fall in love with a ghostly girl of their own, Mallory. Radiant, luminous, Mallory comes between them—how couldn’t she?—and the twins—connected so tightly they’re known only as the twin and the other twin—drift apart like two different ships on a shifting sea.

Their father—known only as Our Father—seeks the land of immortality, convinces his crew that if they can make it to where the moon meets the horizon, they’ll live forever. But after years of sailing and few rubies to show for it, he seeks forever in the teeth of vampires. He leaves their mother—known as Our Mother—behind time and time again.

But Our Mother grows more desperate with each passing day, with each hushed avast! at the breakfast table, so she tries to cut the pirate out of them. Sutures them shut, paints their skin, does anything she can to raise these kids to be different from their father.

“Our Mother believes one day he’ll regret what he’s done. Our Father will miss us. He’ll see all the holes he’s left gaping like tears in our sail, and he’ll come back. Our Father will decide to be a father instead of a pirate, a husband instead of a captain. One day, he’ll finally let his heart admit love.”

Only and Ever This by J.A. Tyler is poetry in prose. Each sentence, each paragraph, so lyrically constructed that the literary fiction fan has something to re-read with blurry eyes. The images return; the sentences go circuitous and introspective in the midst of the great sea dreams. This is one of those literary novels with such beautiful prose that you’d expect it to be plotless, but then the plot arrives to send you bobbing along on uneven seas, fighting for each breath of air, only to notice when you come up that you’re somewhere else entirely. 

It’s a pirate story, sure, but so is every family story it turns out. The pirate father is our work-obsessed father; the ghostly mother is our overworked, caring parent who tries anything she can to help her kids grow strong and smart. We just hope that she has more influence on their path than coming-of-age stories make you believe.

The protagonist—one of the twins—is a hopeful, loving brother who sees his future laid out for him with grand adventure and a best friend at his side. But the heartbreak only begins with the ghost girl down the street, the realization that his twin is changing and sailing off on his own adventure. It’s a loss at the same time as it’s a growth-point; they are different people, they have different paths. We all do, pirates on the same ship or not. 

Only and Ever This is an astounding feat. If you’re drawn to lyrical fiction but still want the adventure of a pirate plot that means something, grab your parrot and your peg leg. You’re in for gold.