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A review by angelayoung
Don't Skip Out on Me by Willy Vlautin
4.0
DON'T SKIP OUT ON ME is a melancholy book, the kind of book (at least if you're not an American, as I'm not) you think should be written about America, Americans and especially about mixed-race Americans. Mixed-race in this sense meaning half-white, half-Paiute Indian, so half new America and half old America (before the new Americans, the European emigrants, arrived). A book not about those who succeed but about those who dream and try and, often, fail. A real book about real people and what happens to them, as opposed to a book that subscribes to the idea that achieving the American dream is always possible, for everyone.
Vlautin's language doesn't pull any punches (literally: Horace wants to be a boxer and succeeds and fails, both) and I got the feeling from the beginning that Horace's journey wasn't going to go too well. And yet there are moments of true tenderness and understanding between Horace and the much older man, Mr Reese, on whose farm Horace worked before he lit out to try his luck as a boxer. Their relationship continues, intermittently, as proxy father and son, by telephone and letter.
Nothing works out for Horace, not in love, not as a boxer and not in the end. But along the way the journey is so beautifully told and is so full of emotional truth that it slowly dawned on me that, despite the differences in culture and country, Horace's story is the story of most of our lives: life isn't always great, but it's not always so terrible either. Horace manages to achieve at least some of what he dreams of achieving and manages to live well enough, sometimes.
DON'T SKIP OUT ON ME is a story about human connection and understanding when it works and when it doesn't. A real story, as in true and truly felt, about people who live on the fringes of contemporary American society (but also about all of us, despite surface differences of race and background).
Vlautin's language doesn't pull any punches (literally: Horace wants to be a boxer and succeeds and fails, both) and I got the feeling from the beginning that Horace's journey wasn't going to go too well. And yet there are moments of true tenderness and understanding between Horace and the much older man, Mr Reese, on whose farm Horace worked before he lit out to try his luck as a boxer. Their relationship continues, intermittently, as proxy father and son, by telephone and letter.
Nothing works out for Horace, not in love, not as a boxer and not in the end. But along the way the journey is so beautifully told and is so full of emotional truth that it slowly dawned on me that, despite the differences in culture and country, Horace's story is the story of most of our lives: life isn't always great, but it's not always so terrible either. Horace manages to achieve at least some of what he dreams of achieving and manages to live well enough, sometimes.
DON'T SKIP OUT ON ME is a story about human connection and understanding when it works and when it doesn't. A real story, as in true and truly felt, about people who live on the fringes of contemporary American society (but also about all of us, despite surface differences of race and background).