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A review by dsugai
Henry Henry by Allen Bratton

dark emotional reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

While I was uncomfortable with the
sexual abuse/incest
of Hal’s father and I stepped away from the book for a time, I was pulled back to the story and Hal’s life. 

It was a sunny day, cool and dry, with a blue sky high-vaulted but not infinite, and a breeze that carried Ha's smoke away.

In the middle of the dining room, his vision succumbed again to mould-like spots of white and purple, as if his body were decaying while he was living in it.

Why now, with so many years of experience, could he not look at a picture of himself and tell whether it had happened yet? It didn't matter, he supposed. He would have always been what he was.

Hal wanted, with the petulance of the conscious sinner who has just been given cause for remorse, to be put back into the body he'd been given when he was born, and have another chance to keep it pure.

Smoking, they fell into silence. Hal, having forgotten, remembered the pity of the world.

Once a real thing had passed into memory, it was just as unreal as a dream.


 He had the insomniac's look of tiredness past tiredness, the widower's look of grief past grief.

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