Oliver Loving

October 15, 2017
Ten years later, a school shooting in West Texas is revisited from the perspective of a family it changed forever. What we know, what Eve Loving, her husband, Jed, and their son, Charlie, know, is this: a recent graduate named Hector Espina Jr. returned to the Bliss Township School campus the night of the homecoming dance, shot the drama teacher and three of the students who were rehearsing with him, ran into Oliver Loving in the hall and put a bullet in his head, and then committed suicide. What Oliver knows or doesn't know is unclear, as he remains in a coma a decade later in a dismal facility devoted to hopeless cases. Is he locked into his paralyzed body, fully aware, or has he been gone ever since that November night? The narration of his memories leading up to the dance--which revolve around a crush on a classmate who walked away from the shooting unscathed--suggests that he's in there, but the reader can't be sure. The intervening decade has not been good to the town of Bliss or to any of the Lovings. The high school never reopened, and the town's Latino population fled the wave of xenophobia that arose from the incident. Eve Loving has become a wasted, martyred woman who compulsively pulls out her eyelashes and shoplifts books and electronics as gifts for her son when he awakens. Jed and she are separated; he's tumbled ever further into alcoholism, silence, and fruitless attempts at making art. Charlie Loving, 13 at the time of the tragedy, eventually gave up on trying to stanch his parents' emotional wounds and fled to the East Coast, where he has been trying to write a book about his brother with no success at all. When a new MRI becomes available that may definitively resolve the question of Oliver's consciousness, perhaps allowing him to communicate and give answers about what happened that night, it turns out that all the survivors have known, and buried, much more than they ever let on. Block (The Storm at the Door, 2011, etc.) has serious chops; he should trust the reader more, repeat and analyze a little less. A topic both timely and timeless, psychologically astute and vividly rendered, with strong characters and a rich sense of place.

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October 23, 2017
Block (The Storm at the Door) once again explores the ways in which debilitating illness breaks apart tenuous family bonds in his unsettling third novel. Set 30 miles north of the Mexico border in west Texas, where closed storefronts outnumber what’s in business and sentiment against “illegals” runs high, the book opens with a shooting at a school dance that leaves a popular teacher dead. Four students also die, including gunman Hector Espina Jr., the 21-year-old son of an undocumented Mexican sanitation worker. Seventeen-year-old Oliver Loving survives and is discovered on the floor covered in blood by his father, Jed, but he is in a vegetative state. Over the course of the next decade, the event takes its toll on the townspeople, especially Rebekkah Sterling, a crush of Oliver’s who escaped the shooting, and Oliver’s guilt-ridden family members. Jed descends into drunkenness; Oliver’s mother, Eve, maintains a myopic bedside vigil; and Oliver’s younger brother Charlie flees to New York, but never pulls his life together. When a new test shows signs that there is activity in Oliver’s brain, hope is tentatively restored, but at a steep cost for everyone involved. Block discloses the truth of what happened at the shooting by telling the story from different perspectives. Though the lead-up to the big reveal is perhaps too long to sustain itself, the book poses big questions about what constitutes a life worth living.

November 15, 2017

Block's powerful, ambitious third novel (after The Storm at the Door and The Story of Forgetting) examines the dislocation, confusion, and psychological trauma experienced by families and communities when sudden, violent loss of life occurs. At the heart of the novel is a tragic event that has become shockingly familiar--a troubled young teenager bursts into his west Texas high school and kills a beloved music teacher and a number of students before taking his own life. The repercussions of this event are deep and far-reaching, and Block traces them over the course of ten years, focusing on one family, the Lovings, whose son, Oliver, survives the attack but is left in a vegetative state, unresponsive and helpless. Block follows the members of this family--Oliver's mother, father, and younger brother, along with Oliver's female friend, Rebekkah--as they try to come to terms with this loss. The author handles this deep psychological exploration very skillfully. The ending of the novel is a beautifully rendered meditation on the nature of forgiveness, mercy, and healing. VERDICT Enthusiastically recommended for fans of literary fiction.--Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT

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Starred review from November 1, 2017
For 10 years, Oliver Loving has lived in a persistent vegetative state, the result of his being grievously wounded during a mass shooting at his small West Texas high school, a senseless tragedy that no one can explain. Oliver's story moves back and forth in time and among several points of view as readers learn about his past, the lives of his familymother Eve, father Jed, and younger brother Charlesand the impact his shooting has had on them and their uneasy, uncertain, and sometimes antagonistic relationships. But now, for the first time since the shooting, a new MRI machine has detected activity in his brain. Is it possible Oliver will wake up with answers to the questions surrounding the shooting, questions that have plagued Manuel, an aging captain of the Texas Rangers, all these years? Block's plot is intriguing enough to keep the pages turning, but it is his idiosyncratic, resolutely individual characters who really demand attention as they drive the narrative. Block has done an excellent job of building both his characters and the West Texas setting, which lives vividly on the page, all heat and dust and decrepitude. At once timely and timeless, this is an exciting story that rewards reader interest.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)