An interesting look, on how one action can change so many lives, and for so many years.
A school shooting is always going to have many consequences, not just for the shooter, but the victim, and all their families.
This shows us how we got there, and how we deal with after.

Oliver Loving, Stefan Merrill Block's second young adult novel, is a simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking look at the reaction and hardship of a Texan shooting

One warm, West Texas November night, a shy boy named Oliver Loving joins his classmates at Bliss County Day School’s annual dance, hoping for a glimpse of the object of his unrequited affections, an enigmatic Junior named Rebekkah Sterling. But as the music plays, a troubled young man sneaks in through the school’s back door. The dire choices this man makes that evening —and the unspoken story he carries— will tear the town of Bliss, Texas apart.

Told from differing viewoints while Oliver lies in a coma for ten years, this novel is a powerful meditation on family, trauma and the power of secrets. Well written and recommended.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to read and review this book.

After losing and replacing my broken Kindle and getting a new phone I was unable to download the title again for review as it was no longer available on Netgalley.

I’m really sorry about this and hope that it won’t affect you allowing me to read and review your titles in the future.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
Natalie.

A really sad story about hope and its dangers. I enjoyed the complexity of the characters but struggled to stay with the story

This was a beautifully written heart-wrenching read. Oliver Loving is shot in left in a vegetative state. Years later due to new technology they look at helping him, this will mean they finally know the whole story of what happened.

Told from Olivers POV and his family members this is a beautifully descriptive book. Heartwrenching and touching!

Oliver Loving, Stefan Merrill Block's second young adult novel, is a simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking look at the reaction and hardship of a Texan shooting in terms of its impact on both the local community and the victim's families. The pedestrian and unusual writing style takes a little getting used to but stick with it. This novel has everything going for it - it's deeply moving and poignant, with beautiful three-dimensional characters and a plot that is thoroughly engaging and has you invested in how events turn out. If you enjoy thought-provoking stories then this will be a sure-fire hit with you, no pun intended. Recommended.

Many thanks to Atlantic for an ARC.

Oh no, I had such high hopes, especially as the book is blurbed by the wonderful Kamila Shamsie! But unfortunately, I found this tale to be rather messy: The story felt like a contraption to hold the author's ideas together, the changing points of view didn't ring true, the whole thing was way too long for what it had to offer, and I am not sure what the point of the novel is - it's just too convoluted and unfocused.

So let's sprint through some of the issues Stefan Merrill Block discusses:

- School shootings
Oliver Loving has been in a vegetative state for ten years because he has been hit in the head by a bullet that was fired in a school shooting. While the author touches upon the dynamics of fame and easy access to weapons that stand behind many of these incdents, it turns out the actual motivation is not bullying or loneliness, but a crime, so we are dealing with an act of revenge. The possibility to take action for better gun control is dismissed with the remark that shootings only motivate people to buy more guns anyway, and Texas is portrayed as a pretty hopeless case altogether. I am not sure whether this counts as thorough analysis.

- Sexual abuse
Yes, this features as the crime at the center of the mystery, and it puts the actions of the shooter, the 21-year-old son of an undocumented Mexican sanitation worker, in a different light, but it also does take away from the topic of school shootings, shifting the focus to questions of crime and revenge. The whole thing feels like a plot device that was shoehorned in for reasons I cannot fathom.

- Patients in a vegetative state
If you are dealing with a family member in a vegetative state or even a coma, the problem is that your loved one is hardly able or in most cases unable to communicate with you - you will have to make the decisions for them and take the responsibility. So if you like to know how terrible this is, read "Waiting for Eden" - certainly do not read this book, because it tries everything to circumnavigate the problem of non-communication. I have seen a number of questionable medical treatments in my time, but what allegedly happens in this hospital is outrageous.

- Dysfunctional family
I salute Stefan Merrill Block for trying to show what a school shooting does mean for the families of the victims. Oliver's family has been dysfunctional before the incident and completely falls apart afterwards, but the way perceived guilt is discussed in this story just felt contrived. This probably goes back to the problem of the revenge mystery which does not blend well with a tale about a school shooting.

- Artistic ambition
It remains unclear to me why art sometimes seems to stand for disappointed dreams and sometimes for coping. The whole motive is just inconsequentially drawn.

- The American West
Yes, you read that right: Oliver Loving is named after a Texan rancher and cattle driver (this guy here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_...), his brother Charles Goodnight Loving after his buddy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles...). And now check this out: The "real" Oliver Loving died of gangrene after a Comanche attack in 1867 (most of present-day northwestern Texas was their territory). The fictional Oliver Loving was shot by a school shooter. Just let this completely insane parallel sink in. What was this author thinking?

So all in all, a worthwhile topic that has the potential to ask important and uncomfortable questions, but this book just refuses to really tackle them.

Block's "Oliver Loving" is not only an examination of the impact of a tragedy on a family and a community, an exploration of the ‘locked in’ state, but also about needing answers and about clinging on to hope.

‘It’s not a story, Charlie. It’s our lives. This is real life.’

In this wonderful, heartbreaking novel the central focus is Oliver Loving, a shy, awkward, 17-year-old who is caught up in a school shooting and now lies in a persistent vegetative state in an assisted care facility. This event, in a small town called Bliss in the borderlands of Texas, which also cost the lives of 3 students and a teacher, hangs over the whole story as it hangs over the whole town and its people. The shooter, a young man called Hector Espina, killed himself after the event, and so the question of ‘why’ pervades the narrative. The setting is appropriate too, as Block’s characters – especially Oliver himself – live an existence on the edge, somewhere between two lives, the before and after.

Each of the main characters in the book are themselves caught in their own form of prison, trapped in a life they no longer enjoy or trapped in the guilt they feel for the events of that fateful night: Oliver’s parents, Eve and Jed, whose marriage falls apart as they struggle to deal with Oliver’s situation in their own way; Oliver’s younger brother Charlie, who moves away to New York and lives the life of a failed writer mired in debt to his landlord; Rebekkah Sterling, the object of Oliver’s unrequited love at high school; and Manuel Paz, the local police officer who remains obsessed with the shooting.

The narrative switches between each of these characters in turn, giving us insights in to the lives of these damaged people. Startlingly, when the focus is on Oliver himself, the narrative switches to the second person (‘Your name is Oliver Loving’). This is a notoriously tricky literary device, but I think it works here for Block as it gives an immediacy to our relationship with Oliver. Different perspectives, different stories. As the book progresses we gradually learn more about the events of November 15th, but essentially and crucially there is never an absolute answer. Eve’s mantra of ‘there is no why’ is ultimately the only truth: it was just ‘randomness and chaos’ that led to her son and her family being involved in this legend or story. Charlie’s failed attempts to write Oliver’s story, using Oliver’s journal and poems, becomes a metaphor for our continual struggle to find meaning, and the novel’s frequent allusions to the stars and space, the vastness of time, simply places the story in this context.

Block’s writing is wonderfully descriptive, often lyrical and poetic. I was engaged by the characters who were believable in their frailties, and the shadow of Oliver haunts the book to the end. The pacing is slower than some might enjoy, but it suits the subject matter and the characters’ struggle to come to terms with letting Oliver go. There are some weighty issues at play in the book: what does it mean to be alive? How can be sure if someone trapped in this state has any consciousness? But the book never lectures; Block’s writing is subtle, moving and beautiful. The end of the book, which I won’t spoil here, is suitably ambiguous in its dealing with the family’s dilemma of keeping Oliver alive or letting him go. There is a ‘yes’, an affirmation, but what does it actually mean?

I loved the book – it is deeply moving, profoundly beautiful and will leave you thinking about big issues long after you reach the end. Oh, and it will probably make you cry. I thoroughly recommend it, this is a great book and I definitely think it deserves 5 stars.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in return for an honest and unbiased review.)

One tragic night, a shooting at the local high school tears apart the Loving family.

10 years on, Oliver Loving, still unresponsive, is subject to a battery of tests to try to ascertain once and for all if he still has a level of consciousness.

Slowly we watch his torn apart family – his worn down mother Eve, his alcoholic father Jed, and his brother Charlie – come together, alongside Rebekkah (also there on that terrible night), to reveal their own parts in the tragedy and the truth is gradually revealed.

Heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal measure, OIiver Loving is a story of family, hope, solitude, and reconciliation – to the truth, to life, and to an ending.

An ok read.
This book goes in all sorts of directions
It’s based in Texas where a family has gone through an awful tragedy
Thank you to both NetGalley and Atlanticbooks for my eARC of the book in exchange for my honest unbiased review

A novel told from multiple perspectives about a family in Texas living in the aftermath of a tragedy.