Media Coverage
If you have the courage, this book will take you on a harrowing journey through the lives of people whose shoes you'd rather not fill.
Synopsis
This four-story collection is about how many lives interact in the world and how one false step, move, or thought can change everything for us.
The exploration of lives is a constant journey, some sad others brilliant. All, though, share one quality: struggle. The struggle to succeed, to find meaning, to find happiness, or to find freedom.
What is the journey that you are on now? And how are you faring? The subjects of the stories are somewhere on their paths toward a resolution that they may never find.
But isn’t that all of our lives?
We want resolution, about one matter or another, at all stages of our lives, but we may never find it.
And isn’t that just sad?
I'll be plain from the outset: this book impressed me, and while it's one I can recommend, it's not necessarily one I can recommend to everyone. If you're seeking a book that will make you feel good about the human condition, Divergent Lives of No Consequence: Short Stories is probably not it.
In this book's four short tales (I found them to be a lot like case studies, actually), Juan J. Alemán II takes us on guided tours through the unenviable lives of his characters. We find them struggling with the injustices they have seen, experienced, or both. Most of them are searching for social acceptance and social connection, and these things elude them time and again. Each protagonist ultimately decides how to respond to his circumstances and the challenges he faces, and in most cases, death is a prominent ingredient in the solution he selects.
The first story takes us into the life of a child who's desperate to escape the life that fate has thrust upon him. His present state may be joyless, but at least he looks to the future with hope. That sense of hope dissipates in the three subsequent stories, whose principle players are men who choose to use death as the answer to their questions in life, and that answer may be directed either inwardly or outwardly.
Alemán's prose keeps the characters' thoughts and actions (mostly thoughts) vivid and clear. The stories never feel like they're dragging, and it's easy to forget that these stories are not, in fact, particularly short. I especially appreciated the author's knack for portraying human relationships while minimizing the use of dialogue. The manuscript itself is well-edited and refreshingly free of the excessive typos and misspellings that sully so many independently-published works.
I'm happy to give this book four stars out of five. Those who have served in the military, as the author did, could very well find some of these stories relatable. I think the book should also serve as required reading for aspiring social workers. If you want to find out why, get your hands on a copy of Divergent Lives and read its second story.
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