Always the Sun by Neil Cross

Always the Sun reminded me of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, only that Always is a lot more interesting and easier read. By the way, if you are going to read this book, do take note that there are several covers. I got a different one. Alright, here goes.

Basically this book is about a father, Sam and his son, Jamie who have lost a wife (for Sam) and a mother (for Jamie). They move to Sam's hometown after a while and try to start life afresh. Jamie enters a new school and Sam gets a new job. Things don't turn out too well. Jamie is skipping school and Sam starts to fret.

The main theme of this book is paternal love and how a father tries desperately to protect his son as well as attempts to prove to others, Jamie and himself that he's a good father. Upon learning that Jamie might be being bullied at school, he turns to various means to ensure the safety and happiness of his son, including acts that would seem immoral, gruesome or senseless to the other characters in the book but not by him (and miraculously, probably not to us). However things don't quite turn out as planned and at the end we realize the reason for his actions, which were implicitly hinted at but never directly talked about throughout.

At the first read, the book starts out slow and boring and continues to be so for quite a while. The author uses deceptively simple language and actions. There's a kind of terror within those simple words. You know that something is going to happen or already happening but you don't understand what until the very end of the book, and when the understanding comes to you, it's really scary. Simplicity is only a veil.

It's not a happy ending for this one. However, much as the book is good, it seems to lack something though I'm not sure what.