Bernard Jan's Blog - Posts Tagged "queer"

The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley by Shaun David Hutchinson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Words are like emotions and in The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley Shaun David Hutchinson portrays with great attention and knowledge every stage of heartbreak, guilt, recuperation, laughter, desperation, apathy, hope. And love.

Drew is a boy who doesn’t want to leave the hell of the hospital in which his family died. He hides, draws and works there in his self-induced punishment driven by a strong sense of guilt. He is also a boy whose heart is full of love for two other terminally ill children, his friends Lexi and Trevor, he is trying to save from the claws of death. But he also is a boy who is pulled to Rusty, another teenage boy who is wheeled into the ER in a loud agony with half his body burned.

Drew’s and Rusty’s worlds collide and shape into a new reality of hope and happiness that can happen outside the walls of the hospital, a reality which is not completely devoid of painful pasts and sadness which linger anchored to it.

The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley is a beautiful Young Adult dark book about finding the way out of dark with the comic book by Christine Larsen inside it and the ending which could last a few heartbeats (or heartbreaks) longer.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Bernard Jan



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FAG by Jonathan Hill

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


FAG is Jonathan Hill’s capital work. I’ve read many of his later books, but this one strikes to your core the hardest. With most precision.

As it was emotionally draining for the author to give a painful birth to it, it was emotionally challenging for me as a reader to finish reading it. But it was fulfilling, rewarding, and enriching too. For now I know better Jonathan Hill. And why he writes so freaking marvelous stories.

If you are (not) afraid of the darkness within you, your fears and secrets, read this book. It will shake you, true, and make you watch your tears roll down your cheeks in the mirror of your soul. But it will also comfort you, give you strength and a much-needed hug as it helps you face yourself and raise from your own personal hell, which is not Brierley’s Boarding School for Boys, as it encourages you to embrace your real you. With all your oddities and differences.

I wish every author writes such a brutally honest and impactful book in their lifetime. Books like this make their legacy to this world priceless.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

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Bernard Jan



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