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Title: The Ha-Ha

Author: Dave King

Narrator: Terry Kinney

Format: Abridged

Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-07-05

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 51 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Now Sylvia is a single mom with troubles of her own, and she needs Howard's help. She is being hauled into a drug rehab program and she asks Howard to care for her 9-year-old son, Ryan. The presence of this nervous, resourceful boy in Howard's life transforms him utterly. With a child's happiness at stake, communication takes on a fresh urgency, and the routine that Howard has evolved over the years, designed specifically to minimize the agony of human contact, suddenly feels restrictive and even dangerous. Forced out of his groove, Howard finds unexpected delights (in baseball, in work, in meals with his housemates). His home comes alive with the joys, sorrows, and love of a real family. But these changes also open Howard to the risks of loss and to the rage he has spent a lifetime suppressing.

Written with a luminous simplicity and grace, The Ha-Ha follows Howard down his difficult path to a new life. It is a deeply moving and unforgettable story about the cost of war and the infinite worth of human connection.

Critic Reviews:

"Compelling, compassionate." (Booklist)

Members Reviews:

The Ha Ha is no laughing matter

I bought this book eight years ago and put it in the to be read box where it is has sat unread until last week. I have no excuse. It should have been read sooner both for the writer and the reader.

There is so much in this book and Howard Kapostsash carries it all in his head because he can not speak because he decided a long time ago to take that off the list of things to be rehabilitated when he came back from Nam with half his head creased like a dented cantaloupe.

There is everything he remembers, his parents, Sylvia, football, sex, the first time kind of sex in all of its tender and passionate display, the explosion, the flower just before his headlong flight, betrayal, intended and not, and most of all Ryan who connects everything that cannot be connected for Howard.

The entire narrative of this story takes place inside of Howard's head. Dave King fully imagines the flow of memory and emotion, as well as the always odd connection between present sensation and past memory, with a language of joy and grief equally in measure.

There is grace in this book. You can't share it if you don't read it.

Channels for communication

Very very few books have touched my soul as did The Ha Ha. As I read it, I had to stop many times to contemplate Howard's existence; his world. What might if feel like to be this extraordinary yet prosaic protagonist. How do we communicate as one human being to another? What happens to our world and our relationships when we cannot speak or read or write - but can still think and feel? Author Dave King casts a brilliant light on this compelling and at times heartbreaking condition - to think but not to speak. To hear but not to be able to respond. To understand but not have the ability to read. Communication is all we have to reach out to another person; to engender love or hate; to learn and share experience. Yet in some subtle way, Howard is able to tell os of his life through the words of King. It is extraordinary and subtle.

I had to stop at various points in the book to let myself feel the events in the daily lives of the protagonist and of the very few people with whom he creates a bond. Howard's inability to communicate in the conventional sense does not leave us with a bitter or solitary man.