Review
In his third novel, Jonathan Evison takes another look at the ways individuals and families can fracture in modern American life. Evison's debut novel,
All About Lulu, plumbed the fraught territory of half-siblings. The bestselling
West of Here involved multiple characters and storylines as it moved back and forth between the late 1800s development of Washington state's Olympic Peninsula and its current day legacy of history.
Revised Fundamentals once more moves the lens in close.
Ben Benjamin's life has almost fractured out of existence. Having been a stay-at-home dad, he carries the burden of complete responsibility for an accident that resulted in the deaths of his two young children. We learn of this loss early on but it is not until almost the end of the book do we learn how it happened. To make things worse, Ben's wife has left him and he has no...
Beyond the Book
Muscular Dystrophy encompasses a a group of usually inherited disorders that involve increasing muscle weakness and loss of muscle tissue over time. Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a rapidly worsening form of the disorder that affects only males. The usual cause is a defective gene carried by the mother, but about one-third of cases appear to be spontaneous mutations in the male's genes. Many mutations of the gene can cause DMD but only some common ones have been identified. Symptoms of DMD, which include fatigue, learning difficulties, muscle weakness and progressive difficulty walking, usually appear early in life around age 5.
