{"id":1182,"date":"2018-12-31T16:06:35","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T16:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1182"},"modified":"2018-12-31T16:06:35","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T16:06:35","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-123","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1182","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews<\/span> and Foreword Reviews, <\/span>writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine,<\/span> and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

LITERARY FICTION<\/p>\n

Stefan Merrill Block<\/span><\/p>\n

Oliver Loving<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Flatiron Books<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-1-2501-6973-0, (also available as an e-book, as an audiobook, and on audio CD), 400 pgs., $26.99<\/p>\n

January 16, 2018<\/p>\n

Oliver Loving is seventeen \u2014 an awkward, lonesome, aspiring poet<\/span> with \u201ca nearly anaphylactic aversion to prolonged eye contact,\u201d in first-love with the mysterious new girl Rebekkah Sterling \u2014 when he walks into a high-school dance and never walks out. Hector, an enraged, deceived, despairing young man with a gun, cuts Oliver down, along with four others. Ten years later Oliver remains in a vegetative condition; one bullet has decimated his brainstem and, with it, his family.<\/p>\n

Oliver\u2019s first neural exam in several years is days away. Eve, Oliver\u2019s mother, who visits her son daily, regards the exam with a \u201cdread that [is] tidal and annihilating.\u201d She clutches a hope that Oliver is still in that husk somewhere. To learn that he is not may snap the last thread of her sanity. The question in that room with Eve every day is, of course, <\/p>\n

Oliver Loving is the extraordinary new novel from award-winning author and Texas native Stefan Merrill Block.<\/span> He explores what becomes of the living in the aftermath of tragedy; the duality of sustaining, cruel hope; and how indecision becomes, by default, decision. A many-layered story, Oliver Loving addresses the nature of consciousness, the animating force, and the limits of our knowledge. Immediately intriguing, opening with the narrator addressing Oliver in his hospital bed, multiple points of view and narratives weave the story of how Oliver was transformed into a legend, a myth, the \u201cmartyr of Bliss, Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every life in this book is divided into before and after. Block\u2019s characters are complex, flawed, damaged people with rich backstories, living inside a breaking-news crawl. We get to know Oliver through flashbacks to the autumn before. Charlie, Oliver\u2019s younger brother, flees to New York City trying to claim a separate fate. Jed, their father, is a mostly-absent, failed and frustrated, drunken painter and erstwhile art teacher. Eve is vindictive and punishing, the walking wounded, made of breathtaking pain and bone-deep weariness, keeping score. Rebekkah walked out of the classroom where the shooting happened, and never spoke of it, \u201c[her] silence \u2026 a godlike force, in which she could take infinite forms.\u201d Robert Olen Butler<\/span> says plot is simply \u201cyearning challenged and thwarted.\u201d And so Hector became plot.<\/p>\n

Oliver Loving ebbs and flows, plot twists lurking around corners and in shadows. Block writes complex prose with beguiling metaphor, skillful foreshadowing, and clever, disarming wordplay. A kind-of Greek chorus chimes in regularly, expounding on mental illness, gun violence, the media, xenophobia, drugs.<\/p>\n

Hector killed himself, robbing everyone of justice, maybe vengeance. Where to turn with the questions? What to do with the anger? The fictional Big Bend community searches for specific reasons \u201cto ward off the vagueness of jingoistic nightmares\u201d provided by politicians. The Texas governor said terrorism; others said immigration, guns, closeted gay romance, conversion to Islam. The issues are timely, to our everlasting shame, in \u201ca country psychotically armed for end times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oliver Loving<\/span> is a study in mourning, grief and guilt, probing the possibilities of redemption and reconciliation. How do we live with chance, randomness, chaos? And if Oliver is still in there, wouldn\u2019t that be \u201cconfirmation of an unthinkable horror, the most hideous solitary confinement?\u201d Empathic, transporting, bold, and original, Block creates an immersive literary experience, terrible to contemplate, impossible to forget.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Newby is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews and Foreword Reviews, writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine, and The Collagist. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}