Book Review: Hawkes Harbor

Reviewed By: Cheryl - RAM

Hawkes Harbor     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
S. E. Hinton
Class/Genre:   Fiction   Fantasy   Dark Fantasy   Horror
Tor, 2004, 256 pages

S.E. Hinton is best known for her books for younger readers. 'Hawkes Harbor' is her first novel for adults.

Jamie had a rough start in life as a bastard in an time and place every child was expected to have a mother and a father. He feels abandoned and betrayed when his mother, the only family he has, dies and the priest she appealed to from her death bed for help finds a place for Jamie in a strictly-run orphanage. Jamie emerges from his painful childhood as a fighter, a rough-and-ready hard man.

The story is picked up again twenty-seven years after Jamie's mother's death and his 'abandonment' to the orphanage. Tough Jamie has turned into a lost and broken man, a patient in an asylum for the mentally ill.

The missing years are cleverly revealed in bits and pieces - Jamie's memories, scattered and fragmented at first; the doctor's speculations; descriptions of other characters. The build-up to the revelation of the cause of Jamie's collapse is brilliantly handled, as is the description of the horror he endures. This is an original approach to a popular theme. If the book has a weakness, it is that the denouement is a little long, and the loose ends are a little too neatly tied up.

Cheryl - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Cheryl - RAM