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Luke and Jon by Robert Williams (view source)
Revision as of 17:19, 16 February 2010
, 17:19, 16 February 2010no edit summary
There are moments of startling clarity in this book that splinter your heart - ''I will tell the truth... There were no pieces to pick up... I should have just let them beat me up...'' - but it's never dour or grim. In fact, while some of Williams's words do hurt immensely, the overall feel has a real lightness of touch. In all art, I love the things that are outwardly delicate and beautiful and fragile, but inwardly full to brimming of powerful emotions and themes - pain, grief, anger, bullying, friendship, love, and loss, and this book is a wonderful example. It's quirky but not saccharine, painful but not hopeless, difficult but not hard.
Your heart bleeds for both boys right from the beginning, but Williams allows Luke his rose-tinted memories at first and so your sympathy is very much of the surface, isn't-it-awful-poor-lamb, variety. Gradually, though, as the bigger picture is revealed and we see the warts-and-all life that Luke loved and - with the death of his mother - lost, the superficiality disappears and it's not sympathy you feel, it's empathy. It's all so very real. But the world continues to turn, life goes on, and Jon arrives as the type of waif and stray Luke's mother would have welcomed, and becomes the catalyst for healing. I read the last page of ''Luke and Jon'' with a real sense of regret that it was all over.
It's only February and I've read some wonderful books in 2010 already, but this is my favourite book of the year so far, and by a country mile too.