A stranger helps a young boy and his family heal from the effects of a tragedy in this work of fiction.
In Sales’ debut novel, she mines the complex relationship between father and son. When the story begins, 10-year-old Pete is running away from home. Seeking shelter, he meets kindly Jake, an ex-soldier who lives by himself in a shack and has his own issues. Jake finds that Pete has left home because his mother is in the hospital after a failed suicide attempt, and his father, Rob—also ex-military—spends his time either working or abusing Pete. The boy is failing school and feels unloved and unaccepted no matter where he turns. Gradually, Jake gets to the bottom of Pete’s problems. But it turns out that he isn’t the only family member who needs fixing. Rob’s sadistic temper and his wife’s loathing of both herself and Pete are other serious issues that need resolution before they destroy the struggling family. However, the more Jake digs, the closer he gets to a truth so terrible that it might be impossible for the family to recover from it. Sales’ debut is an excellent novel that explores the many intricate emotions that constitute a family dynamic, particularly how those emotions can provide salvation, isolation or sometimes both. The author affectingly limns Jake’s and Rob’s PTSD. Although Pete’s belief that he failed his demanding father drives the story, Rob provides its center—a man caught in an emotional vortex that he can neither understand nor control. The story moves briskly along, and the desperate attempts of Pete and his family to deal with their problems will resonate with most readers.
An emotionally honest, thoughtful novel about families whose superpowers involve coping with the everyday.
Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-1491713358
Page Count: 178
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.). But Charlie’s no rich kid: the third child in a middle-class family, he attends public school in western Pennsylvania, has an older brother who plays football at Penn State, and an older sister who worries about boys a lot. An epistolary novel addressed to an anonymous “friend,” Charlie’s letters cover his first year in high school, a time haunted by the recent suicide of his best friend. Always quick to shed tears, Charlie also feels guilty about the death of his Aunt Helen, a troubled woman who lived with Charlie’s family at the time of her fatal car wreck. Though he begins as a friendless observer, Charlie is soon pals with seniors Patrick and Sam (for Samantha), stepsiblings who include Charlie in their circle, where he smokes pot for the first time, drops acid, and falls madly in love with the inaccessible Sam. His first relationship ends miserably because Charlie remains compulsively honest, though he proves a loyal friend (to Patrick when he’s gay-bashed) and brother (when his sister needs an abortion). Depressed when all his friends prepare for college, Charlie has a catatonic breakdown, which resolves itself neatly and reveals a long-repressed truth about Aunt Helen. A plain-written narrative suggesting that passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety. Perhaps the folks at (co-publisher) MTV see the synergy here with Daria or any number of videos by the sensitive singer-songwriters they feature.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02734-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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