MY BOOK WORLD

Nothing like holding a book on your shelves for twenty years before reading it! But it has been worth the wait. A young Howard Kapostash serves sixteen days in Vietnam before he is severely injured—so injured that even with therapy he cannot speak or write any longer. Think about it, a fairly good looking young man is so injured he emerges looking like Quasimodo—even into his forties. Though he does carry a card informing strangers he is of normal intelligence, his life is full of difficulties.
Oh, he does all right with the people he deals with every day: the nuns at the convent where he keeps the grounds mowed and neat, the woman living with him who tends his books and in return is allowed to use his kitchen to maintain her soup business. Sylvia, a former girlfriend from high school, who now asks (demands) a big favor of him. Sylvia is checking herself into a drug rehab place, and she needs a place to leave her nine-year-old son. Pronto. Yes, for an undetermined amount of time, little Ryan will come to live with Howard and the rest of his housemates: Nit and Nat, two hippie types who manage to pay their rent, but barely.
Howie and Ryan develop an interesting relationship. Through his usual pantomime, Howard is able to communicate with Ryan and even teaches him a few things about baseball and life. After eight weeks, the two become close, Howard being like a father Ryan has never had in his life, and because Ryan has taught Howard a few things, as well. This becomes the time when Sylvia is well enough to leave rehab. Instead of this reunion of mother and son being a happy time, however, Sylvia sets up a cause-and-effect situation by which Howard is victimized once again. I won’t spoil the ending because it is well worth reading for yourself to find out what it is. No wonder the novel was bestseller in its time!
Yes, about the title. At first I thought this book must be about a stand-up comic. But a ha-ha is “a recessed landscape design element that creates a vertical barrier (particularly on one side) while preserving an uninterrupted view of the landscape beyond from the other side. The name comes from viewers’ surprise when seeing the construction.” (Wikipedia). A photograph or diagram can expand this description if you can locate one. There is a ha-ha at the convent where Howard works, and it becomes a major point in the plot as well as providing a metaphor for Howard’s life.
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WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anton Chekhov
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Shirley Hazzard
FRI: My Book World | Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones