The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison
Reviewed by Spencer
When I brought The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving home to read, I didn’t know what to expect. It was obviously fiction, but, what was it about? The cover artwork had a Foer-esque look to it, but I repeated, don’t judge a book by its cover, don’t judge a book by its cover as I sat in my chair to read. So what can I say about it?
Wow.
Feel free to quote me on that when you tell your friends the same thing, but make sure you cite your source. Wow. And I don’t just capitalize it because it’s at the beginning of a sentence. Now repeat after me, Wow.
Jonathan Evison pulled me along a crazy roller coaster of emotion, made me laugh, almost made me cry –out of empathy of course- and most of all drew me into the story and kept me speeding along, right to the very end. Lost-cause-of-a-man Benjamin Benjamin (yes, a Heller-esque double name!) takes one final road trip with client-turned-friend Trev who is quickly deteriorating from Muscular Dystrophy. The two set out to both escape – and ultimately reconcile with – their past, and along the way meet a series of comical, tragic, and lovable characters. So what is The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving? It’s heartbreak. It’s sorrow. It’s funny as H-E-Double-Hockey-Stick. But that’s not all, oh no.
The chapters are generally short, sometimes only a page, and each heading gives a clue as to what is happening next. So you’re speeding along through this book, when all of a sudden, Bam! Evison crashes you headlong into a second story. But you only catch glimpses of it, of The Disaster. What is it? What is The Disaster? you keep asking yourself as you cruise along, and trust me, you will want to desperately find out what happened to Benjamin once the story begins to unfold. And, in a masterfully crafted tragicomedy of sorts, Benjamin reconciles The Disaster just as the shocking nature of The Disaster becomes apparent to the reader.
But do you know what makes this a truly good book? I already want to read it again.
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