Oliver Loving: A Novel

by Stefan Merrill Block Narrated by Michael Crouch

Overview

"An expert performance by Michael Crouch highlights life-changing moments in a family...He transforms what has become a tragically familiar story into an intricate, nuanced puzzle about real people and real consequences." - AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner

From Stefan Merrill Block, celebrated literary talent and author of The Story of Forgetting, comes a brilliant, propulsive audiobook about family, the traumas and secrets that test our deepest bonds, and the stories that hold us together.

One warm, West Texas November night, a shy boy named Oliver Loving joins his classmates at Bliss County Day School's annual dance, hoping for a glimpse of the object of his unrequited affections, an enigmatic Junior named Rebekkah Sterling. But as the music plays, a troubled young man sneaks in through the school's back door. The dire choices this man makes that evening -and the unspoken story he carries- will tear the town of Bliss, Texas apart.

Nearly ten years later, Oliver Loving still lies wordless and paralyzed at Crockett State Assisted Care Facility, the fate of his mind unclear. Orbiting the still point of Oliver's hospital bed is a family transformed: Oliver's mother, Eve, who keeps desperate vigil; Oliver's brother, Charlie, who has fled for New York City only to discover he cannot escape the gravity of his shattered family; Oliver's father, Jed, who tries to erase his memories with bourbon. And then there is Rebekkah Sterling, Oliver's teenage love, who left Texas long ago and still refuses to speak about her own part in that tragic night. When a new medical test promises a key to unlock Oliver's trapped mind, the town's unanswered questions resurface with new urgency, as Oliver's doctors and his family fight for a way for Oliver to finally communicate - and so also to tell the truth of what really happened that fateful night.

A moving meditation on the transformative power of grief and love, a slyly affectionate look at the idiosyncrasies of family, and an emotionally-charged page-turner, Oliver Loving is an extraordinarily original audiobook that ventures into the unknowable and returns with the most fundamental truths.

More praise for Oliver Loving:

"A breathtaking tale of tragedy and redemption...A triumph." - People Magazine

"The book poses big questions about what constitutes a life worth living." - Publishers Weekly

"Powerful, ambitious...a beautifully rendered meditation on the nature of forgiveness, mercy, and healing." - Library Journal

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

10/23/2017
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. (Jan.)

From the Publisher

"An expert performance by Michael Crouch highlights life-changing moments in a family. ...Crouch is one of those actors who is especially magical creating women's voices. His male characters range from gruff to gentle. Crouch's ability to alter not only his voice but also his attitude is outstanding. He transforms what has become a tragically familiar news story into an intricate, nuanced puzzle about real people and real consequences." -AudioFile, Earphones Award Winner

MARCH 2018 - AudioFile

An expert performance by Michael Crouch highlights life-changing moments in a family. As the Bliss, Texas, High School homecoming dance is underway, recent graduate Hector Espina, Jr., enters the school and shoots the drama teacher and three students. He runs into Oliver in the hallway and shoots him in the head before committing suicide. Ten years after the shooting, Oliver survives in a vegetative state in an institution for hopeless cases. Crouch is one of those actors who is especially magical creating women’s voices. His male characters range from gruff to gentle. Crouch’s ability to alter not only his voice but also his attitude is outstanding. He transforms what has become a tragically familiar news story into an intricate, nuanced puzzle about real people and real consequences. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2018 Best Audiobook © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2017-10-01
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.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169168754
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	01/16/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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