Location: Canada
Member Since: Jan. 31, 2011

ArrowWords

Smashwords book reviews by ArrowWords

  • The Boy Who Laughed on Feb. 10, 2011

    In this story, if it were not for the love so clearly and beautifully told of the father for his sons, Adam and John and adopted Nicky, and their love for him, I would have found his frequent belting and strapping of John and Nicky abusive. I think it would certainly be found to be so by today’s standards. While not from Scotland I am old enough to remember the school strap and a friend whose backside sometimes felt his father’s belt. But the unconditional love in this story so clearly and compellingly told overwhelms and creates a context of caring for this discipline that I could accept it and left me reflecting on what this love might be today, this discipline with love and respect, not anger, to teach, not to personally control. The father accepts and respects the love between his adopted son, the young temperamental and damaged young Nicky and his lover David who dies but endures, and then Nicky and John’s subsequent love for each other. It sets him apart for the time the story occurs. The reader lives through Nicky’s narration of his struggle to come to terms with himself, not his being gay, but his own self control and recurring despair. It is a novel of life, death and most of all being alive and I recommend it. I have only a small criticism in that there are some moments when the narrative seemed to me to wander such as when the family takes a first trip to the United Sates. Some phrases are repeated that became predictable without purpose (others being repeated with a clear intent). That said I will be reading it again which I almost never do with a novel. The first reading took me through emotions from laughter to tears.