That feeling when your instinct urges you to buy a random book that you come across, and you end up falling in love...it's indescribable.
As usual, I was at Kinokuniya, looking for the final installment of the KL Noir series. Out of habit, I browsed the Young Adult section, and I came across this book. These Gentle Wounds. How can you not fall in love with the title alone? Perfect, perfect title for a brilliantly written book.
These Gentle Wounds (I can never grow tired writing and saying the book title) is a debut novel by Helene Dunbar, and I'll say right from the start, she's one to look out for. The book starts like this:
ONE
The last thing I saw before the car hit the water was an eagle pasted against the sky.
And what I remember is this: his tapered wings filled the width of the dirty window; the air held him up with the promise of magic; he looked free.
I used to dream about that bird.
But I don't have dreams anymore.
All I have are memories.
Bam! If the title is not enough to pull you in, the opening passages will do the work. The novel centers around Gordie "Ice" Allen, a fifteen-year-old boy who survived after his mother drove her car into a river five years back, with him and his three younger siblings in it. All he has left is his older half-brother Kevin who shared the same mother. His abusive father disappeared after the funeral, and now all Gordie wants is a semblance of normalcy.
But what is normal when you have to live with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that looms over you every single day for the past five years? This is the basis for the story arc in These Gentle Wounds.
Far off in the distance, a yellow balloon rises in the sky. Some kid must have let go of it. I wish so badly I could catch the string in my hand and let it pull me away.
It's words like these that pull you in deeper. There's an understated brilliance in Ms Dunbar's writing. The words do not distract you by their beauty, but lends to the broken beauty that is Gordie. The words are not big, but they ring true. They make Gordie and his brother Kevin into flesh and bones, and you can't help but feel the urge to hug them close and tell them that everything's going to be okay, because they need to know that.
Because you need them to know that.
Because you need to know that.
Before the event that forever altered his life, Gordie's father wanted him to be a hockey star. Now that his father is out of the picture, ice hockey becomes his salvation. That is, until his father enters the picture and wants him back. Just when he's finally doing okay, with a potential love interest in the new girl Sarah Miller, his life starts to spin out of control again.
Kevin, equally broken, has always been Gordie's anchor, his strength. When Sarah enters the equation, he feels as though his role as the guardian is being replaced, and he lashes out. The darker side of him surfaces, but his character is so compelling that you feel for him.
Sarah, despite her being a troubled child, always in the shadows of her elder brother, and everything a rebellious teenager is, becomes perfection in comparison. I love how Ms Dunbar doesn' make her that unobtainable queen bee. I love how she is a just a regular girl who knows what she wants. And the romance between Sarah and Gordie is tentative, just hinted at. I love this.
The one criticism that I have is about Jordan who, when compared to the main characters, isn't fully fleshed out, becomes a plot device. For someone who plays a pivotal role in motivating Gordie's actions, he is sorely underdeveloped and underplayed.
In an umbrella-genre that's inundated with selfish, insecure teenagers whose only thoughts are how to make a guy/girl fall in love with them, a novel about a boy dealing with PTSD is a much-needed breath of fresh air.
May These Gentle Wounds help kids who need to know that they deserve to be loved, that they deserve to live.
May Ms Dunbar keep producing more important works like this.
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