Critical Injuries

Rating:
Summary: A Wordsmith strikes again!
Review: Novelist Joan Barfoot strikes another home run with her latest, Critical Injuries.
Barfoot says she writes because, "I get to live inside other lives, not only my own. This is a kind of dehydrated reincarnation: add words and stir."
Luckily for us her latest reincarnation, her eightth, is one of her best!
This time out, she inhabits forty-nine-year old successful Isla and seventeen-year-old dreamer Roddy. Isla is reveling in second chances. Roddy is about to escape his past. A chance encounter changes everything. Critical Injuries reconstructs their lives with hope and grace.
Barfoot clearly sets the stage of her main characters' inevitable meeting, describing, "One of those moments when life turns completely ass-over-teakettle, in no good way, no good way at all." --Page 12.
One character quickly runs into a store to spend her money; the other is there to improve his financial situation.
While each journey to that moment is truly unique, the way in which their individual paths cross that fateful night, forever unites them. And the consequences of this chance meeting will involve courage and choice.
"Funny how sorrow always seems more powerful than joy. Joy just kind of jogs along, but grief, that really throws a person off the track, onto a new one." pg. 202
I was fascinated with Barfoot's unsentimental voice in the bodies of Isla and Roddy. There is a striking contrast between Barfoot's gift of prose and her main characters' sparse use of verbal expression.
And while most of the characters in Critical Injuries, are "doomed to observer status in the shocking events" [pg. 51] that transpire, I was entertained. I couldn't wait to find out what happens to these characters.
Barfoot's narrative flows seamlessly between Isla's and Roddy's ongoing drama, guiding the reader to its inevitable conclusion.
Barfoot's tale convinces me that living in the moment may be a good thing, for when tragedy befalls us, you'll have more than enough time to recall your past. That is, until you focus on a place you want to be.
Barfoot's yarn is woven to perfection, words spun like the master craftswoman she is. No wonder Critical Injuries is longlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the 2001 Trillium Book Award!
I fully expect to see the cinimatic Critical Injuries, made into a movie and shown at Cannes and Toronto Film Festivals in the very near future. It will be well worth the wait!

Rating:
Summary: Necessary Healing
Review: Simple pleasures lead to dangerous results in Barfoot's deeply compelling and emotional novel Critical Injuries. Isla, a middle aged women goes with her husband Lyle to get an ice cream cone as a small reward. This innocent act turns to tragedy when Isla finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Roddy is a teenage boy who makes a foolhardy plan with his close friend Mike to make some quick money in an attempt to escape the monotony of their small town. A thoughtless action at the dairy bar sparks a chain of events that will alter their lives forever. Gradually, as the heart wrenching struggles of the present unfold, the pasts of Isla and Roddy are related to give an unprejudiced view of their development. Each has had to deal with unexpected loss, disappointment and terrifying challenges. Extraordinary decisions need to be made by ordinary people. This novel is a tribute to that struggle. Slowly we are given a detailed picture of the nature of recovery and forgiveness. The brutal honesty of the ending creates a resounding impression.

The tremendous strength of this novel is in the power of Barfoot's prose to create a sense of immediacy. She does this through establishing powerful voices for her characters that comment upon situations as they occur letting their thoughts and memories leak out into the present moment. Her portrait of each character is deeply sympathetic to their struggle to live happily and thus the reader feels a strong connection to them. It is as if, through a slight alteration of fate, these moving characters could be us and their harrowing events might be ours. Each character is neither perfect nor evil. The author depicts with elegantly constructed prose the flaws of human nature using accuracy and profound wit. The intellectual conflicts the characters face are presented with emotionally rounded pictures lending depth and wisdom to their struggle. The novel makes a powerful impression.

Rating:
Summary: Barfoot not at her best
Review: When a young man (17 years old) shoots and wounds a woman who entered a store he was attempting to rob, both their lives are turned upside down. The story told alternately by each of the main characters reveals their individual terror and struggle; the woman with her paralysis and sudden change of fortune is compared to the boys sudden realization that he has made a mistake that will last him the rest of his life. Their struggle is for forgiveness for each other and for those who have peopled their lives.

There are some beautiful poignant moments when each of the main characters realize how influential family have been and how little they meant at the time. The first person narrative becomes a bit boring at times but otherwise the story is well told and maintains interest.