Oliver Loving

An exquisitely moving novel of sorrow, love, and the miracle of human connections. - Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire For ten years, a secret has slept with Oliver Loving. One moonless November night, Oliver shyly joined 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 played in the gymnasium, a troubled young man snuck in through the school's back door with a gun. It was all over in a few terrible minutes; the dire decisions this man made that night, and the unspoken story he carried, forever transformed Oliver's world and tore 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. Meanwhile, his parents and his brother try to cope in their own disparate self-destructive ways, whilst Rebekkah, who left Texas long ago, still refuses to speak about her own part in that tragic night. Oliver Loving is a brilliant and beautifully told story of family, as heart-breaking as it is profound. It is a novel of the myths we make; the ties that bind us and the forces that keep us apart.

About the Author :
Stefan Merrill Block grew up in Plano, Texas. His first book, The Story of Forgetting, was an international bestseller and the winner of Best First Fiction at the Rome International Festival of Literature. Stefan's stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, NPR's Radiolab, GRANTA, The Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. Stefan lives in Brooklyn.

Review :
An exquisitely moving novel of sorrow, love, and the miracle of human connections. A dazzling, psychologically astute, scientifically engaged novel about love, loss, and the mysteries of the mind... Block dares to ask some of the most profound questions of what it means to be alive. Stefan Block's profound novel, Oliver Loving, is intricately constructed and rich with devastating, gorgeous prose. Haunting, bittersweet, addictive. Oliver Loving is an extraordinary novel about family and community, told with real heart and humour and style. Stefan Merrill Block has the rare ability to capture, in his literature, the secrets we store in silence - the pages of a life that are rarely read aloud. The last book that made me cry: Stefan Merrill Block's Oliver Loving. Its subject matter - a young man in a coma after a school shooting, and the repercussions for his family - lends itself to tears, but the novel's real accomplishment is to avoid pulling heartstrings. A haunting, imaginative, and deeply poignant story by one of America's great wordsmiths. I love this wise, probing and beautiful novel. In elegant and beautiful prose, Block describes how Oliver's family splits apart after his shooting.