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Title: Shattered Wings
Author: Bryan Healey
Narrator: David Stifel
Format: Unabridged
Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
Language: English
Release date: 07-17-12
Publisher: Bryan Healey
Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 2 votes
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
John holds the American dream: A man he loves, a beautiful little girl, a suburban home and a well-paying job...
And then a sudden layoff brings about unexpected financial and emotional strain. As he struggles to find new work, a growing sense of despair triggers a relapse into alcoholism and causes him to face his demons of addiction, discrimination, and regret as he tries desperately to recover before it's too late....
Members Reviews:
Review: Shattered Wings
A very slow read. It was depressing and heart wrenching. The battle of an alcoholic to gain sobriety and become the person he wanted to be to his spouse and his daughter. Losing a job is jarring and unsettling. I could relate to the insecurity that followed the event. Many salesmen friends have told me of the sense of insecurity in succeeding in the next deal. After a few dry calls they openly wonder if they'll ever be able to close another deal. The key is never giving up because everyone has someone counting on them.
Bold, courageous
Bryan Healey's novel, Shattered Wings, won me over completely. The descent of his protagonist, John, from his delightfully gay heaven--with a good job, an attractive and almost saintly lover, and an adopted daughter they both adore--to the hell his bigoted and yet knowing father had predicted all along (thus "shattered wings") is believable, intense, and tragic.
John has a drinking problem. In order to keep his partner, Charlie, and his daughter, Cassie--his family--John stops drinking but struggles to remain abstinent. Then, apparently a victim of the recent economic crisis, he loses his job.
The bookends to Healey's story seem quite right to me. The beginning immediately arouses dread. The ending boldly goes, in the confessional first person no less, where many writers would lack the courage to go.
Reading Shattered Wings is like viewing an Ed Norton movie, where we're thinking, we love you, man; you don't need to do what you're doing to yourself. Does his character hear our plea? Of course not. He's on the screen in a magnificent fall. We're on our couch.
Those of us who read and admire thoughtful, serious fiction know a John. We sometimes see him when we look in our mirrors. I readily gave him the benefit of every doubt, even as he refused to do what I wanted him to do. His struggle, emanating from his father's rejection, is too familiar and true for him not to capture our sympathy as if it were prey.
Readers should know that Healey handles his "sex" scenes with admirable restraint. I found it good to know that, yeah, John and Charlie are very much in love with one another that way, too. But Healey wisely knows he doesn't have to provide a play-by-play account in this kind of story. He can let us imagine the details, or not, as we see fit.
I'm looking forward to what Bryan Healey next has to offer his readers. I hope he continues to write realistic fiction.
The horror in an honest and realistic depiction of the world as we know it, as in Shattered Wings, can far exceed the make-believe horror in the genre realms.
