Justin Evans
Author of A Good and Happy Child: A Novel
Works by Justin Evans
Associated Works
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought - Volume 45, Number 4 (Winter 2012) (2012) — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Evans, Justin
- Birthdate
- 20th Century
- Gender
- male
- Occupations
- Film Scout
Business Development
author
digital media executive - Relationships
- Evans, Martha Noel (mother)
- Nationality
- USA
- Places of residence
- New York, New York, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- New York, USA
Members
Reviews
I read this whole book, so it gets more than one star, but it was something of a disappointment.
It's remarkably down on psychiatry, and while I admit the field has its failings, I find the relentlessly negative portrayal a little one-sided and tiresome. But that's not what irritated me the most about this novel.
Most of the characters are faceless names, essentially interchangeable suits of clothing interacting with one another, but even that didn't irritate me much.
The most irritating thing show more about this novel is the narrator's voice. It's not consistent with the set-up of the novel. An example passage, written by George of Today from his memories as a child of eleven, summing up a person he's recently met:
So, George is supposed to be precocious. I get that. I'm the mother of a precocious just-turned-twelve myself, and they do say some remarkably insightful things. But precocious or not, an eleven-year-old is not going to make observations like these. This kind of remote, somewhat sarcastic generalization of a population is something an adult would do, not a precocious pre-teen. I could see a teen doing this sort of thing, accurate or not, showing off their worldliness, but at eleven, I'm not sure that kind of awareness has developed. Eleven is still so inward-focused.
And sure, one could argue that this was written by an adult as a memory of childhood (even though he says that he "reckoned quickly" that Kurt was a particular type, implying that he did this at age eleven), and he could have come to these conclusions over years of reflection, but on the very first page, the narrator tells us,
This doesn't sound like the kind of memory one has turned over in one's brain over the decades. He's shut the door on these memories, and that implies that all of his reflections will be those of his eleven-year-old self. So either the author overstated the lack of memory at the beginning (a rather melodramatic move), or he wrote all of the "notebook" recollections from a perspective that doesn't fit the story.
Maybe one could argue thatthe demon---quietly with him all of these years---had revealed all of these insights to him and the journals were in some way written under the demon's influence, but that doesn't seem consistent with the rest of the story. And if it's all supposed to be notebooks, even setting aside my incredulity that he can remember all of that dialogue so clearly and that he would write in that much detail a part of his life that he's not even thought about in thirty years, I don't really see how the shift to present tense in the last part of the closing chapter makes sense. Did he go back and write that bit in present tense in the notebook? I just don't buy it.
And that's the biggest problem I have with this novel. Despite some pleasantly spooky scenes and an interesting theme, I just don't buy it. show less
It's remarkably down on psychiatry, and while I admit the field has its failings, I find the relentlessly negative portrayal a little one-sided and tiresome. But that's not what irritated me the most about this novel.
Most of the characters are faceless names, essentially interchangeable suits of clothing interacting with one another, but even that didn't irritate me much.
The most irritating thing show more about this novel is the narrator's voice. It's not consistent with the set-up of the novel. An example passage, written by George of Today from his memories as a child of eleven, summing up a person he's recently met:
"No, there was another type that gravitated to Preston. Unlike their sensualist brethren, these were professionals, often out-of-towners, who quietly fell in love with Stoneland County's creeks and mountains and honeysuckle---and out of love with their white-collar jobs. They moved through Preston society with a gentle, almost monastic air, like they'd found something so special they didn't want to move too fast, or speak too loud, for fear of breaking it. Kurt, I reckoned quickly, was one of these." (70)
So, George is supposed to be precocious. I get that. I'm the mother of a precocious just-turned-twelve myself, and they do say some remarkably insightful things. But precocious or not, an eleven-year-old is not going to make observations like these. This kind of remote, somewhat sarcastic generalization of a population is something an adult would do, not a precocious pre-teen. I could see a teen doing this sort of thing, accurate or not, showing off their worldliness, but at eleven, I'm not sure that kind of awareness has developed. Eleven is still so inward-focused.
And sure, one could argue that this was written by an adult as a memory of childhood (even though he says that he "reckoned quickly" that Kurt was a particular type, implying that he did this at age eleven), and he could have come to these conclusions over years of reflection, but on the very first page, the narrator tells us,
"In fact, I can honestly say I had no memory of the events I describe in these pages---meaning no conscious memory, no current memory. They are things I experienced in childhood, then tucked away in a file along with the soccer games, the Christmas presents, and the illicit midnight Nutter Butters."
This doesn't sound like the kind of memory one has turned over in one's brain over the decades. He's shut the door on these memories, and that implies that all of his reflections will be those of his eleven-year-old self. So either the author overstated the lack of memory at the beginning (a rather melodramatic move), or he wrote all of the "notebook" recollections from a perspective that doesn't fit the story.
Maybe one could argue that
And that's the biggest problem I have with this novel. Despite some pleasantly spooky scenes and an interesting theme, I just don't buy it. show less
The Little Book of Data: Understanding the Powerful Analytics That Drive AI, Make or Break Careers, and Could Just End up Saving the World by Justin Evans
I was probably not the intended audience of this book because I am a data person and my career is in data analysis. What I think the author wanted to do with this book is to encourage other people not to be scared of data and data people taking over the world. But it is a weird book. It's some history of data, a bit of (rather deep) philosophy and then the powers of data and how we can use it. At the end of each chapter there are key points, thought starters and where we go next, which make show more it look like a text book. But for the rest of it it doesn't really feel like a text book. It's quite entertaining and full of interesting anecdotes. The problem for me was that when I got invested in one story, the author jumped to another story. Sometimes I didn't really understand what he wanted to tell with these stories until I reached the key points. In this way, it sometimes felt like a poorly written term paper. But I learnt some very interesting facts about climate, earthquake, and cancer research, for example, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. show less
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Do demons exist? Is a person automatically deluded for believing demons exist? Is demonic possession ever a viable diagnosis or can psychiatry adequately explain the oftentimes bizarre phenomena associated with those alleged to be possessed by demons in its gargantuan compendium of itemized psychological disorders as voluminous as there are verses in the Holy Bible?
Justin Evans' first novel, A Good and Happy Child, pivots around this historically polemical debate, pitting in one corner, the show more empiricists with their Thorazine and mental institutions, versus the religious with their stoles and exorcising incantations, in the other. Yet, despite the infinitely wide philosophical worldview divide, A Good and Happy Child remains relatively neutral choosing a side to cheer for, in its clever and crisp first person narration, despite a devilishly delightful book cover which could convey otherwise, its obvious opinion on the matter.
George Davies is the good and happy child of Justin Evans' remarkably riveting debut, only George may not be "good" and he's definitely not a "happy child". O the impish irony of Evans' book title! Should've seen the irony coming when Evans inserts an Auden quote as his preface:
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good
We meet George, as an adult, presenting his psychotherapist his life in turmoil: a sad, unimaginable scenario in which George can't hold, let alone touch, his newborn child. He's never touched his baby boy once. And he can't satisfactorily articulate why. His wife, understandably, is outraged over his awful aversion to their baby; what she justifiably perceives as his outright rejection of his own defenseless flesh and blood. Does she really know this man? How can a father not hold his own child? What the hell's wrong with him?!
Maybe Hell, literally, (or at least Hell's occupants), are his problem. Or maybe not. Ambiguity, anyone?
His wife insists George seek treatment or their marriage is over. He's begrudgingly obliged.
At the outset of therapy, since he's uncommunicative (not uncommon) his therapist asks him to write about what happened to him when he was eleven (because at least that much has risen to the surface - something bad happened to him at eleven, but what?).
In George's journal, we learn what happened: A disembodied face appeared to George in the shower: Demon, or delusion? A "Friend," an entity we'll come to know later as "The Other George," visited him at night: Imp, or imagination? When George looks in the mirror and sees The Other George reflected back, only not reflecting George's own movements or facial expressions back at him as a proper mirror should, we wonder: Reality, or hallucination? Spooky stuff, no matter what's really happening.
Complicating matters, family-wise, George's father, Paul, is dead. How did he die? Demons killed him in Honduras, if we're to believe his close friends, Tom Harris, medieval scholar, amateur exorcist; Clarissa Bing, psychotherapist and deacon well versed in demonology, and an amateur exorcist herself; and Freddie, George's good natured godfather. George's mother, Joan, doesn't subscribe to her late husband's friend's beliefs, not at all; she's a (according to George) "liberal who doesn't believe anything." Her late husband, Paul, wrote a book not long before he died ascribing belief in demons, known to George as "That Book" (how his mother pejoratively denoted it) and it cost George's father his academic reputation and, by association, cracked off a chunk of George's mother's academic credibility, and loads of social embarrassment to boot. This polarization between religious/empirical beliefs in a university setting plagues the entire novel (in a good way) as divergent beliefs (and the subsequent actions taken based on those beliefs) escalates and adds even more tension and butting-heads conflict to an already tense and exciting - and scary! - reading experience.
So are we to believe what George wrote in his journal? His therapist asks George point blank: Do you believe it; that it was demons; that you were possessed? We know the therapist doesn't believe. But what we don't know is how whatever George believes will effect the rest of his life. His marriage. His baby boy.
I believe future readers, regardless of what George believes, will be as enthralled with this thrilling psychological?/supernatural? (both?) almost literary-level thriller as I was. show less
Justin Evans' first novel, A Good and Happy Child, pivots around this historically polemical debate, pitting in one corner, the show more empiricists with their Thorazine and mental institutions, versus the religious with their stoles and exorcising incantations, in the other. Yet, despite the infinitely wide philosophical worldview divide, A Good and Happy Child remains relatively neutral choosing a side to cheer for, in its clever and crisp first person narration, despite a devilishly delightful book cover which could convey otherwise, its obvious opinion on the matter.
George Davies is the good and happy child of Justin Evans' remarkably riveting debut, only George may not be "good" and he's definitely not a "happy child". O the impish irony of Evans' book title! Should've seen the irony coming when Evans inserts an Auden quote as his preface:
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good
We meet George, as an adult, presenting his psychotherapist his life in turmoil: a sad, unimaginable scenario in which George can't hold, let alone touch, his newborn child. He's never touched his baby boy once. And he can't satisfactorily articulate why. His wife, understandably, is outraged over his awful aversion to their baby; what she justifiably perceives as his outright rejection of his own defenseless flesh and blood. Does she really know this man? How can a father not hold his own child? What the hell's wrong with him?!
Maybe Hell, literally, (or at least Hell's occupants), are his problem. Or maybe not. Ambiguity, anyone?
His wife insists George seek treatment or their marriage is over. He's begrudgingly obliged.
At the outset of therapy, since he's uncommunicative (not uncommon) his therapist asks him to write about what happened to him when he was eleven (because at least that much has risen to the surface - something bad happened to him at eleven, but what?).
In George's journal, we learn what happened: A disembodied face appeared to George in the shower: Demon, or delusion? A "Friend," an entity we'll come to know later as "The Other George," visited him at night: Imp, or imagination? When George looks in the mirror and sees The Other George reflected back, only not reflecting George's own movements or facial expressions back at him as a proper mirror should, we wonder: Reality, or hallucination? Spooky stuff, no matter what's really happening.
Complicating matters, family-wise, George's father, Paul, is dead. How did he die? Demons killed him in Honduras, if we're to believe his close friends, Tom Harris, medieval scholar, amateur exorcist; Clarissa Bing, psychotherapist and deacon well versed in demonology, and an amateur exorcist herself; and Freddie, George's good natured godfather. George's mother, Joan, doesn't subscribe to her late husband's friend's beliefs, not at all; she's a (according to George) "liberal who doesn't believe anything." Her late husband, Paul, wrote a book not long before he died ascribing belief in demons, known to George as "That Book" (how his mother pejoratively denoted it) and it cost George's father his academic reputation and, by association, cracked off a chunk of George's mother's academic credibility, and loads of social embarrassment to boot. This polarization between religious/empirical beliefs in a university setting plagues the entire novel (in a good way) as divergent beliefs (and the subsequent actions taken based on those beliefs) escalates and adds even more tension and butting-heads conflict to an already tense and exciting - and scary! - reading experience.
So are we to believe what George wrote in his journal? His therapist asks George point blank: Do you believe it; that it was demons; that you were possessed? We know the therapist doesn't believe. But what we don't know is how whatever George believes will effect the rest of his life. His marriage. His baby boy.
I believe future readers, regardless of what George believes, will be as enthralled with this thrilling psychological?/supernatural? (both?) almost literary-level thriller as I was. show less
Much as a bad ending can ruin a good book, it wasn't enough to make me write this whole experience off entirely. The dialogue that Evans creates between psychiatry and religion is quite interesting and I almost wish he'd gone further into exploring that strange cosmology (it fits with a generally Christian worldview but also incorporates older things and that intrigues me greatly) - but regardless, along the way, he puts characters in somewhat predictable scrapes that still spook the reader. show more George's problems are, for this reader's money, very real and very much not his. And watching the grownups around him argue over whether or not his mind should be his own, while he's fighting that very same struggle against something inexplicable, is a kind of horror in and of itself.
More at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/10/10/a-good-and-happy-child/ show less
More at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/10/10/a-good-and-happy-child/ show less
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