The Reincarnation of Douglas Kavanaugh by Tony Haynes

I started reading The Reincarnation of Douglas Kavanaugh by Tony Haynes uncertain what to expect. I'm familiar with Haynes's poetry and songwriting, but I hadn't read his prose before. Haynes creates a realistic world that feels both familiar and unfamiliar. As I allowed myself to drift into the world Douglas Kavanaugh inhabits and stop trying to create poetry, I felt Kavanaugh's struggle to figure out his life as it changed from one incarnation to another. There's a supernatural feeling to Haynes's writing that left me feeling like I was on a ride between realities and life changes. Kavanaugh goes from likable to unlikable and back to likable. He inhabits many different personalities and motivations but always remains faithful to his desire to not only cure cancer but rid the world of it. His drive to achieve this goal often conflicts with his desire to enjoy his life. His strong need to cure the world also allows him to compromise scientific testing to begin implementation not quite realizing just how the side effects from his cure will affect the world for both the good and the bad. The conflict that arises when those side effects take place forced me to think about my future, my ambition, my role in the world. The Reincarnation of Douglas Kavanaugh is at its heart a story exploring the ripple effect of every action we take in the world.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Image
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert grabbed my attention from the first page. Kolbert illustrates the future of extinction by illuminating the history of extinction. She tells a story of the Earth we inhabit in both scientific and historical terms related to the myriad species of animals that have and do inhabit the Earth. She travels to myriad places on the Earth to talk to scientists and historians. I felt like she took me along on her journey to places I would never go on my own. She discussed the effects of natural processes as well as unnatural processes affecting the extinction of species and how those extinctions lead to other extinctions. Her references to previous mass extinctions were always linked to the story of our Earth and present-day extinctions. She talked about frogs, bats, auks, coral, and trees among other things. The Sixth Extinction doesn't shy away from pointing out how each species is a part of an ecosystem and how all our eco...
Read more

A Snitch in Time by Sunny Frazier

Image
Sunny Frazier always delights, and A Snitch in Time is no exception. She writes the Christy Bristol series in a way that feels lighthearted even in its darkest moments. When Bristol goes on vacation to visit her friend, Lennie, she never expects to get drafted into working for a different department doing her job. Bristol is intrigued enough by the crime at hand that her protestations seem half-hearted at times though her annoyance is very real. When she and Lennie get into a fight, she's left with nothing but the work the department expects her to do. Frazier drops the reader in the Sierra Nevada Foothills creating a sense of isolation that makes the reader cheer for Bristol to stand up to her superiors and get out of there while simultaneously wanting to her to solve the crime. When a witness contacts Bristol via phone she doesn't take her seriously at first only to discover she might have vital information. With suspicion cast in multiple directions, Bristol isn't sur...
Read more

Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine by Noura Erakat

Image
Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine by Noura Erakat approaches the Palestinian struggle for freedom by delving into how legal maneuvers are used to manipulate politics and political maneuvers are used to manipulate the law to justify the oppression of the Palestinian people. Erakat's explanations had me repeatedly wondering how people can be so cruel and why they choose to be. Erakat demonstrates and examines how the wording in multiple documents including the Oslo accords left loopholes and contributed to the subjugation of the Palestinian people while leaving room to make vague claims of a mirage of progress that falls apart with the smallest amount of investigation. An undercurrent throughout Justice for Some is that oppressors make laws the oppressed are expected to live by keeping the oppressors in power and the oppressed under control. Justice for Some explains much of the law that often gets cited in media and other analysis used to justify the dehumanizat...
Read more