The Van Gogh Cafe

by Cynthia Rylant

The Van Gogh Café is a thought provoking, well written, albeit quirky little book! Each chapter is really a separate short story independent of the other chapters. The setting remains the same: a café. Marc, the owner, and Clara, his daughter, are featured in each story but not always as the main characters.

“The Possum” is a peculiar story about a possum hanging upside down from the tree across the street from the café. Possums normally are nocturnal creatures, but this one hangs around during the day. People bring food to feed the possum but wind up feeding stray animals. A stranger in town sees all this, has an epiphany, goes home and turns his home into a shelter for stray animals.

“The Star” features a dapper, dignified elderly man who enters the café and stays all day waiting for a young man to appear. Marc, the owner, recognized the man as a silent movie star and talked to him. It turned out that the old man first performed in the Van Gogh Café when it was a theater. The old man stayed and stayed, then quietly died. The young man he had been waiting for was himself.

“The Wayward Gull” made me smile. Somehow, a directionally challenged seagull wound up in Kansas on top of the café roof. The gull drew so much attention, good and bad, that Clara told it to head to California. The next thing the reader knows is that a group of gulls and a moving van headed to California have arrived. Shortly, the van leaves for California with a rooftop full of seagulls.

My class will love the “Van Gogh Café”, and I can read as many or as few chapters as I want, and time permits.