The Free

A Novel (P.S.)

By: Willy Vlautin

Narrated by: Willy Vlautin

Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

In his heartbreaking yet hopeful fourth novel, award-winning author Willy Vlautin demonstrates his extraordinary talent for illuminating the disquiet of modern American life, captured in the experiences of three memorable characters looking for meaning in distressing times.

Severely wounded in the Iraq war, Leroy Kervin has lived in a group home for eight years. Frustrated by the simplest daily routines, he finds his existence has become unbearable. An act of desperation helps him disappear deep into his mind, into a world of romance and science fiction, danger and adventure where he is whole once again.

Freddie McCall, the night man at Leroy's group home, works two jobs yet still can't make ends meet. He's lost his wife and kids, and the house is next. Medical bills have buried him in debt, a situation that propels him to consider a lucrative - and dangerous - proposition.

Pauline Hawkins, a nurse, cares for the sick and wounded, including Leroy. She also looks after her mentally ill elderly father. Yet she remains emotionally removed, until she meets a young runaway who touches something deep and unexpected inside her.

In crystalline prose, both beautiful and devastating, this 'major realist talent' (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) considers the issues transforming ordinary people's lives - the cost of health care, the lack of economic opportunity, the devastating scars of war - creating an extraordinary contemporary portrait that is also a testament to the resiliency of the human heart.

©2014 Willy Vlautin (P)2014 HarperCollinsPublishers

Critic reviews

"Vlautin writes cleanly, beautifully about the people who hang on despite odds.... A fine novel...bounded by courage and kindliness." ( Kirkus Reviews)

"Willy Vlautin writes novels about people all alone in the wind. His prose is direct and complex in its simplicity, and his stories are sturdy and bighearted and full of lives so shattered they shimmer." (Cheryl Strayed, The Oregonian)

Free Fallin', Brilliantly

What a brilliant, unique narrative via the perspectives of three characters, one primarily via an allegorical dream.

Each intersect at the hospital where Leroy has been taken from a group home after falling down a flight of stairs after having a momentary state of suicidal clarity out of brain trauma suffered via a roadside bomb in Iraq.

^^^^^^^^^

"... that night, for the first time since the explosion, he woke with clarity. Memories flooded into him. He could recall his routines, the week's menu, what time he went to bed and which days he took a shower. He could remember his mother bringing him takeout food and sitting next to him while they watched TV. He could remember his girlfriend, her eyes and face, and the birthmark on her calf and her walking around in her underwear. He could suddenly recall the way she laughed, the sound of her voice when she was upset, the way she sneezed, and the way she sighed sadly when the alarm went off in the morning."

What was happening to him?

***

"He remembered suddenly the long months when every time he closed his eyes it felt like he was drowning in mud. And then there were periods when his thoughts fell into nothing but frustration and violence. How days would pass when every time he heard a door closing or opening he felt certain someone was coming to kill him. The fear of that would engulf him and when the fear passed, the fog would again come and he wouldn't be able to remember anything. ... Was this all his life was? Was this clarity just another illusion, a trick? He knew that most likely he would close his eyes and sleep would come and the clarity would disappear and the frustration, the bleak thoughts, and the fog would return. But at that moment, on that night, he had a window and he decided to escape through it."

"He decided he would kill himself."

^^^^^^^

Freddie is the night man at the "second-rate group home for disabled men in Washington State." He's unable to pay his bills though burning the candle at both ends with a day job running a paint store for a lazy, fat James-Dobson-junkie who inherited the store. After being left destitute by medical bills for one of his daughters and trying to keep his house, Freddie's wife takes both daughters out of state to run off with her lover. He is constantly afraid he will never make it out of this all-work, no-sleep state, lose everything and never have his daughters again.

Pauleen is the hospital night nurse with a fear of relationships, after having been abandoned by her mom when she was 5 and a boyfriend a few years back who didn't want marriage. She must drop in frequently on her mentally ill father. She learns much from her encounters with a young female runaway.

While Leroy's under intensive medical care, his nightmare is so very like a true dream (at least mine), the closest I've encountered in all of literature: varying places and times, sprinkled with reality overlaying a dream sequence in which he and his girlfriend are on the run from "The Free," a mixed military/militia group of "real" "patriots" trying to capture and kill them. But, it is his time spent with her again, his love for her via this life-like dreamworld that sets him free from the fog, the bleakness, the pain.

All three face their fears and take their own paths toward growth and a bit of redemption.

The dialogue is fresh, the main characters so likeable and the author does an admirable job narrating his book.

I give this 5+ stars and highly recommend it.

The feels are strong in this one

In this audio book, Willie "maudlin" Vlautin reads as well as he writes, both simply and exquisitely. A bit more complex and multi-dimensional than his other, movie-inspiring works, this one portrays a half-dozen tough yet sensitive characters afflicted with burdens typical of Western American life. Some succumb, but the major characters, whose lives intertwine, each in their own way come to terms with their lot through personal transformation and perseverance.

Empathy for the underdog

Willy Vlautin’s empathy for the forgotten, overlooked, and less fortunate among us is unbounded. Because he cares so much about his characters, so do we. Their simple and profound acts of kindness to one another mean the world. And he narrates in a simple, unaffected, but very effective way. Thanks to Eddie Muller for calling attention to this underrated writer.