Circa Now by Amber McRee Turner (review)

Tragedy strikes the close-knit Monroe family when twelve-year-old Circa’s beloved father dies in a car wreck. Since he was driving to deliver retouched photos at the time, Circa’s mother avoids the part of the family’s photography studio where Circa and her father had freshened clients’ old photos, as well as added to their own “Shopt” file—a family treasury of images with unexpected elements inserted using Photoshop, complete with amusing captions. Circa’s grief at her father’s passing and her frustration with her depressed, slightly agoraphobic mother is tempered somewhat by the arrival of Miles, a teenage boy suffering from amnesia who has only a photo bearing the Studio Monroe stamp. Circa soon realizes there is a connection between her dad and Miles; not only is there a family resemblance, but Miles would be the same age as the baby her father “Shopt” into a photo. With a growing belief in the power of these pictures, Circa sets out to see if she can use her own talent for altering images to reshape reality in this novel that imbues a family tragedy and grieving process with elements of magical realism. Much like the storyline, Circa is accessible and inoffensive, if a trifle unbelievable; Turner occasionally disrupts the story’s momentum by telling rather than showing, and while the insertion of photos from the “Shopt” file provides context, these greeting card-esque visuals jar rather than supplement. Still, the tenderness, imagination and hope underpinning the story, as well as the ultimate message of finding good in the bad, will have readers turning the pages to see how Circa might shape her present even if she can’t change the past.