Profoundly and wonderfully heartbreaking.

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‘It’s not a story, Charlie. It’s our lives. This is real life.’

In this wonderful, heartbreaking novel the central focus is Oliver Loving, a shy, awkward, 17-year-old who is caught up in a school shooting and now lies in a persistent vegetative state in an assisted care facility. This event, in a small town called Bliss in the borderlands of Texas, which also cost the lives of 3 students and a teacher, hangs over the whole story as it hangs over the whole town and its people. The shooter, a young man called Hector Espina, killed himself after the event, and so the question of ‘why’ pervades the narrative. The setting is appropriate too, as Block’s characters – especially Oliver himself – live an existence on the edge, somewhere between two lives, the before and after.

Each of the main characters in the book are themselves caught in their own form of prison, trapped in a life they no longer enjoy or trapped in the guilt they feel for the events of that fateful night: Oliver’s parents, Eve and Jed, whose marriage falls apart as they struggle to deal with Oliver’s situation in their own way; Oliver’s younger brother Charlie, who moves away to New York and lives the life of a failed writer mired in debt to his landlord; Rebekkah Sterling, the object of Oliver’s unrequited love at high school; and Manuel Paz, the local police officer who remains obsessed with the shooting.

The narrative switches between each of these characters in turn, giving us insights in to the lives of these damaged people. Startlingly, when the focus is on Oliver himself, the narrative switches to the second person (‘Your name is Oliver Loving’). This is a notoriously tricky literary device, but I think it works here for Block as it gives an immediacy to our relationship with Oliver. Different perspectives, different stories. As the book progresses we gradually learn more about the events of November 15th, but essentially and crucially there is never an absolute answer. Eve’s mantra of ‘there is no why’ is ultimately the only truth: it was just ‘randomness and chaos’ that led to her son and her family being involved in this legend or story. Charlie’s failed attempts to write Oliver’s story, using Oliver’s journal and poems, becomes a metaphor for our continual struggle to find meaning, and the novel’s frequent allusions to the stars and space, the vastness of time, simply places the story in this context.

Block’s writing is wonderfully descriptive, often lyrical and poetic. I was engaged by the characters who were believable in their frailties, and the shadow of Oliver haunts the book to the end. The pacing is slower than some might enjoy, but it suits the subject matter and the characters’ struggle to come to terms with letting Oliver go. There are some weighty issues at play in the book: what does it mean to be alive? How can we be sure if someone trapped in this state has any consciousness? But the book never lectures; Block’s writing is subtle, moving and beautiful. The end of the book, which I won’t spoil here, is suitably ambiguous in its dealing with the family’s dilemma of keeping Oliver alive or letting him go. There is a ‘yes’, an affirmation, but what does it actually mean?

I loved the book – it is deeply moving, profoundly beautiful and will leave you thinking about big issues long after you reach the end. Oh, and it will probably make you cry. I thoroughly recommend it, this is a great book and I definitely think it deserves 5 stars.