Books don’t make me cry. It just doesn’t happen. Until now. I didn’t even see it coming. “Green Grass Grace”, by Shawn McBride has to be one of the greatest novels I have ever read. A rollercoaster of emotion, plenty of laughs, characters I relate to, and places I’ve actually been.
People let themselves get frozen in a bad place, lost in space, until they get used to it and can’t change. They bury the best of their love beneath a pile of stubborn bullshit, losing chances, wasting time, missing life. But no more, not me, not the people I love. That shit stops today. Tonight I want to show them all that you tell the people you love that you love them now. You can’t wait another fucking second. And if they don’t get it after tonight, I’ll rain pain on their cupcake asses. I’m down in a karate crouch just thinking about it, ready to inflict the Toohey Chop Suey on the hard-hearted.
That’s 13 year old Henry “Hank” Toohey, during the end of the summer of 1984. After much, much has transpired. Hank is an Irish-Catholic living in an Irish-Catholic block in Northeast Philadelphia. His family, his neighborhood, and his friends are as genuine and as real as day. McBride brings it all to life while you follow Hank’s plan to propose to his 14 year old (and much more mature…err… worldly…err.) girlfriend, thinking this will fix the broken hearts around him – especially those in his family.
I’m sure some probably don’t like the characterizations he gives (Fishtowners anyone?) – but man does he nail it. I love this book!
Karl,
Steve here. I just read this and I will not say it is the best book I ever read, but I enjoyed it. I could easily relate to much of the activity in the book. The only problem is the fact that in 84, when I was “Hanks” age, there wasn’t a kid who talked like they do. While they still had that Philly ‘tude, their spoken word was too sophisticated sounding for your typical philly kid. Much of the rest was pretty dead on – “the drunken, cursing, nasty irish preist, the sounds of cheers coming from the bar and peoples houses when something good happened with a local sports team, the stick ball game, playing suey. One other thing that bugged me was the cheating that went on. Sure, parents were gruff and fighting was fairly normal, but one thing that rarley happened was cheating with someone on the same block or even neighborhood. First of all, no husband is THAT naive to what is going on and even if he THOUGHT someone else was tagging his wife, he would have confronted it a long time ago.
Other than a few of those nuances, it really did bring back a lot of memories and visions of my childhood.