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A debut novel of extraordinary emotional power: When a mute war veteran opens his home to a young boy, he gets a glimpse of life outside his shell--with all its exuberant joys and crushing sorrows.
It's been 30 years since a Vietnam War injury left Howard Kapostash unable to speak, read, or write. Since then he can communicate only with sounds and gestures--a condition that makes him appear slow and disturbed. But inside his head, Howie is the same man he was before the war, longing for Sylvia, his high school sweetheart, and mourning his parents and his chance at a family.
Howie's solitude comes to an abrupt end with a desperate phone call in the middle of the night; Sylvia is being forced into rehab and needs him to care for her nine-year-old son Ryan until she returns.
Though Ryan's first days with Howie are strained by misunderstanding, his presence gradually transforms Howie and his entire household, which includes Laurel, a soup chef, and a pair of housepainters Howie grumpily thinks of as Nit and Nat. By midsummer, their once-cold home is alive with the happiness, disappointment, and love of a real family. But with Sylvia's return imminent, Howie is obliged to wonder if the change is only temporary--and to reconsider, in the process, just what the war cost him.
Triumphant and heartbreaking, The Ha-Ha tells a singular and engaging story and heralds the arrival of a tremendous new voice in fiction.
With Howard as a guide, a potentially corny situation develops into a complex exploration of loss and loneliness that packs a potently bittersweet punch. You laugh, you cry. And you're left with a character who will stick with you for a long while afterward.
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
HermanA Pauwels
reviewed The Ha-Ha on May 08, 2012 The Ha-Ha
Phenomenal story of redemption. Howard had barely made it to Viet Nam when a head injury sent him to the VA hospital, then rehabilitation, and ultimately back home to his parents' house. While his faculties are intact and he moves just fine, his ability to form words - written or spoken - has been taken away by the brain injury. But Howard still can think - very clearly - and what he has to say as the story's narrator is excellent.
Imagine a highly intelligent man stuck in a menial lawn mowing job, hired as charity by a group of nuns, and forced to rent out rooms to a couple of nit wits in order to make ends meet. Imagine that because you can no longer speak or write, everyone around you considers you to have the mental faculties of a child.
Howard is annoyed with how life has turned out, and nobody is more surprised than he when his old girlfriend deposits her only child in his arms on her way to court ordered drug rehab. Suddenly, Howard has to communicate - even if just with gestures - with the boy. He is forced to ask the roommates for help.
Howard begins to have hope, but he realizes that what he has with the child is temporary - a taste of what he will never have.
There are some exceedingly dark scenes here that left me with tears and others full of joy. There are a couple of graphic sexual moments, but they serve as a window into Howard's emotions.
You will find that a "ha-ha" is really just a landscaping trick - a way to assemble hedges or a berm to obscure the view of things we'd rather not see. Howard mows and grooms that ha-ha weekly, but as the story reaches its hopeful conclusion, he is able to look out upon a horizon finally unobscured. 5 stars and on my favorites shelf.
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