Synopses & Reviews
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.
Its 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.
Review
"Jo March, Holden Caulfield, David Copperfield, Alexander Portnoy: many of literature's most memorable novels became so because the protagonist was utterly unforgettable and completely human. That's the key to Dave King's first novel." Anna Quindlen
Review
"A plot summary of this vibrant first novel may sound depressing, but King handles the story with honesty, skill, and humor." Jim Coan, Library Journal
Review
"King will be a writer to watch." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"How richly this new fiction addresses itself to suffering and its synonym patience, for patience is not just a "hard thing," as Hopkins once said, but the way things behave. Perhaps The Ha-Ha scrutinizes behavior so closely because Howie Kapostash, its wounded protagonist, cannot speak, only act or fail to act. The result is a new kind of eloquence, and the reader as well as the hero is rewarded by a new kind of wisdom, the sagesse of the wounded body. Dave King has written a profound lyric of the moral life in patient prose!" Richard Howard
Review
"[F]or us, transported into Howard's mind by the magic of fiction, his long-silenced voice is irresistible. He's unfailingly honest, determined to survive the second half of his life without succumbing to hope or despair....[T]his is ultimately a story of smothered tenderness coaxed back to flame. In the poetic voice of a silent man, King has created a strangely lovable hero whose chance for happiness will matter to you deeply." Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor (read the entire Christian Science Monitor review)
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
Howard Kapostash has not spoken in thirty years. The small repertory of gestures and simple sounds that he uses to communicate lead most people to assume he is disturbed. No one understands that Howard is still the same man he was before his tragic injury. But when he agrees to help an old girlfriend by opening his home to her nine-year-old son, the presence of this nervous, resourceful boy in his life transforms Howard utterly. He is afforded a rare glimpse of life outside his shell ? with all its exuberant joys and crushing sorrows.