The Little Brother by Victoria Patterson
My rating: 3/5 cats
this is definitely on the high-end of my three star cat ratings, and i wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to other readers. patterson’s writing is strong, she approaches a difficult subject matter from a number of angles and she doesn’t shy away from the raw details of a horrific crime and its ripple-effect aftermath. those of you with rape-triggers – this book gets very detailed, very descriptive, to the point where even i was occasionally uncomfortable. i personally count this as a success on the part of the writer, but readers who do not like to feel uncomfortable may wanna know that. having said that, i think this would be an excellent choice for book clubs who can handle it, because it will certainly elicit strong reactions and there are several clear jumping-off points for discussion.
it’s a story of a family divided by divorce and custody, which is then further divided by a conflict between loyalty and morality. unsupervised teenagers and alcohol lead to the commission of a brutal crime, while a video camera records its every shocking moment. and although even has always felt protective of his older brother gabe, when he sees the contents of the video, he’s forced to decide whether his allegiance has limits as he weighs the costs of turning his brother in or keeping silent. in the wake of the crime, many lives are destroyed, and spiraling out of the ugliness of the crime is just more unpleasantness – the ravenous media, defensive parents, insensitive lawyers, political gladhanding, slut-shaming hypocrites; horror begets horror as sides are taken and a girl’s life is scrutinized and torn apart as gossip and her worst experience preserved forever in transcripts.
it’s bold, well-written, and important, but for me it just didn’t have that thing that pushes a book from “i liked it” into “i loved it” territory. it could simply be down to the time/place/mood in which i read it, and i wish i could pinpoint my obstacle, because rereading it today in order to write this review, i’m only seeing its positive qualities. i think it has to do with the tone – there’s something almost surgical about it. or mathematical. something cold, like “here’s the moral dilemma. solve for x.” does this make sense? and that coldness may have been a tactical decision by the author to offset any emotional reaction the reader may have to the horrors on the page – some kind of distancing technique, but i think since i already read with my emotions disengaged, it was probably pushing me too far away.
however, there was a part that made me very uncomfortable. the book is “based on real-life events,” and i’m not sure how much has been fictionalized, but holy hell – that courtroom scene – cavari is the worst. there is not a single line that comes out of his mouth, whether it be in court or in private, that doesn’t make me want to punch him in the face. it’s a little strange that a successful lawyer wouldn’t be able to read a room better – to realize that he is frequently upsetting his own clients, or he may just not care. i wanna say that the courtroom scene is unrealistic and that no judge or prosecutor would allow for such blatant bullying, but it could be one of those “stranger more horrible than fiction” situations that goes on all the time.
i mean View Spoiler » doesn’t that lose you half the jury right there? and as much as i have been tainted by television and movies into accepting completely unrealistic depictions of how a courtroom operates, that scene seemed mindblowingly cruel. which means it probably happened exactly like that.
so, not a book i loved with the parts of me that loves books, but one that i respect and appreciate for existing. tougher and grittier “ripped from the headlines” books are important because there are too many books that tiptoe around serious topics and water down and trivialize these situations into easily-digested pap without managing to inspire outrage in their readers, when outrage is exactly what’s called for. gentling serious issues just desensitizes the reader and sometimes we need a stronger dose of horrifying reality. this one delivers.
