The Hardest Subject?

Novels that have the death of a child at their core are inherently problematic. Is there is any event in the life of a parent more damaging than losing a child? Any writer attempting to convey that trauma in a meaningful way - without descending into the maudlin - is faced with a daunting task.

"The floor was opening up under my feet and nobody seemed to notice it but me." 

I saw the movie version of John Burnham Schwartz's 1998 novel Reservation Road around the time of its 2007 release. I recall being riveted end-to-end and remember how the final confrontation scene between the two fathers - played by Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Ruffalo - shook me up and remained with me for months afterward. When I closed the book several weeks ago, I was relieved and saddened that the novel ended exactly as the film had. Relieved because it was the perfect way to conclude this raw and powerfully written tale. Saddened because, having seen the film first, the impact of the book's brave ending was muted for me.

"She was a husk; she'd never been so empty. 'You're wrong Sergeant. I'm not upset. I'm hardly even here.' " 

For me, the master stroke in Schwartz's novel was his decision to toggle two first-person accounts alongside a third-person account. The first italicized sentence above is in the first-person voice of the father who loses his ten-year-old son in a hit-and-run. It is Ethan Learner's voice that begins and ends the book. The four italicized sentences after that begin with nine flawlessly chosen words - only two longer than one syllable - describing in third person what a mother who has just lost her son would feel like, followed by Grace Learner's matter-of-fact words to the State Trooper investigating the case. 

The other first-person voice in the novel belongs to Dwight Arno - also the father of a ten-year-old boy - the man who accidentally kills Josh Learner. Reviewing all I underlined while preparing to write this post, I struggled to decide which one passage to use here to highlight how skillfully Schwartz depicted Dwight's anguish throughout. In the end, I settled on two. The first concludes Part One of the novel and the other is from the penultimate chapter - part of the confrontation scene I referenced above - the last time we hear Dwight's voice.

"There are heroes, and there are the rest of us. There comes a time when you just let go the ghost of the better person you might have been."

"I had taken from him everything there was to take, and had wanted none of it, had hoped and tried to avoid it, had regretted it deeply. But I had taken his boy just the same."

Read this book before you watch the film. But wait until you are ready before doing either. Both will take a toll.