...[a] breathtaking novel ... It takes great skill to maintain the voice of such a young child believably for the length of an entire novel...For the most part, Navin manages to make Zach’s voice heartbreakingly believable ... The plot becomes perhaps too facile as loose ends are tied up and these parents who have lost their son in the most horrible way begin to move forward too quickly ... But ultimately, Only Child triumphs.
Only Child earns its worth by avoiding gratuitous scenes of horror in favor of a careful examination of the way one boy and his parents, and their community, struggle to survive — and stay together — after the worst has happened ... One of Navin’s strongest techniques is to evoke Zach’s experience with vivid sensory details ... Delivering the whole of this fraught situation through the perceptions of a young child is a difficult task, and at times the necessary simplifying of Zach’s understanding doesn’t serve the story ... Only Child doesn’t attempt to reckon with the political or racial aspects of mass shootings, and its sole focus on a wealthy family is a drawback. But paying attention to one child’s well-rendered inner experience of such an event is valuable, and all too sadly important for our world today.
Many novels have been written on the devastating subject of school shootings...but in Only Child, the event itself is mercifully brief. By Page 10, the shooting is over. Navin’s true subject lies in the aftermath; it is a story of grief ... by employing the voice of a child trying to figure out the meaning of every action, every reaction, Navin is able to explore one family’s anguish to a sometimes excruciating degree of detail, with an innocent appetite for description unavailable to most adults ... Though the wide-eyed perspective is an asset to Navin, one occasionally feels the constraints of having so young a narrator, whose observations can veer toward the maudlin, and to whom every cliché has the appearance of a revelation ... Navin is so skilled at depicting, even in glimpses, the adults in the story, one sometimes wishes she had allowed herself to include their perspectives. She is wonderfully awake to the ways relationships suffer during periods of mourning.
First-grader Zach narrates Navin’s heart-wrenching debut, and his innocent voice effectively grounds the story ... Navin adds layers of (occasionally cloying) complexity. Navin explores the intersection between violence and mental illness in this important and timely book.
Though Zach’s character could have benefited from being a little older, Navin succeeds in the tricky job of narrating her tale through the eyes of a young child. She views her characters with compassion, even as they are not on their best behavior. How could they be? Only Child shows the painful aftermath of a calamity that’s becoming all too common.
The strength of 'Only Child' is the sensation of young childhood that Navin creates ... On the other hand, more nuanced issues in “Only Child” are frustratingly not addressed in depth or at all, because it would be too arduous or contrived to have Zach do so. He’s a highly reliable narrator, honest and endearing, but he’s 6 years old.
First-grader Zach narrates Navin’s heart-wrenching debut, and his innocent voice effectively grounds the story ... Navin adds layers of (occasionally cloying) complexity. Navin explores the intersection between violence and mental illness in this important and timely book.
His touching tactics include assigning colors to his feelings and making paintings of them and studying the 'secrets of happiness' purveyed in the Magic Treehouse series. Seems like a lot of people, and not just the ones in this novel, need to reread those books. A powerful exercise in empathy and perspective.
Those who can handle the difficult subject matter will find the plot to be a page-turner; Navin also excels in brilliantly capturing Zach’s perspective.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
