Daren is a child of the eighties, disillusioned, bored, and troubled with visions of a devouring dark cloud of despair that envelops his own life and those of his closest friends. His response has so far been to push the darkness away as best he can with drug use and desperate self-indulgence, but when he meets Lee, considerably older than himself, he discovers the possibilities of real love as a transformative force. But their relationship is threatened by his continued adolescence, and by his inability to fight his way free of his own inner demons in order to be with her fully as an adult. When tragedy strikes, will it destroy him completely, or can he manage to struggle his way into a new understanding of the world?
Keep a handkerchief or two handy while reading this book, because it is deeply painful to read. There is enough humor and enough love in the story to keep it from being completely dark, but it’s still a heartbreaker. Daren, despite his adolescent self-centeredness and other faults, is a truly appealing character, and while the reader will understand Lee’s frustration with him, it’s also not hard to see why she loves him. His visions and his introspective self-awareness give him a poignant perspective, even when it doesn’t always stop him from behaving self-destructively. Alex and Keith, his childhood friends, act as foils for Daren, and he observes them and their choices with deep affection, but without illusions. Lee herself is almost a spiritual figure to him, the sacred raven he looks to for his ultimate salvation, but the reader is allowed to see her as a human being with her own foibles and difficulties.
There are times when the three boys’ behavior borders on tiresome, self-pitying and annoying, granted, and two of them escape addiction a little too easily for belief, given the sheer range and amount of drugs they consume. The ending catastrophe, too, does come a bit out of the blue, almost as if it were thrown in just for the emotional impact. That doesn’t lessen its impact, but it does divert the flow of the story significantly.
THE KINDNESS OF RAVENS is a heartrending look at a young man’s search for hope, true love, and meaning in a world that doesn’t make that search easy.
Reviewed by Catherine Langrehr for IndieReader