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A review by findyourgoldenhour
The Reckless Oath We Made by Bryn Greenwood
5.0
This is Bryn Greenwood’s gift: she creates characters who are normally on the margins of society, and she makes them so real and so relatable, you find yourself rooting for them. Then, just as you have completely sworn your readerly allegiance, she has them do something so awful you feel personally betrayed. You don’t think you can ever forgive them, or her. In other words, she writes truly human characters.
I loved her first book All the Ugly and Wonderful Things<\i>; it sparked one of the best book club discussion of all time. I was eager to read this until I saw that one of the characters is autistic. My son is autistic, and I normally steer clear. Novels with autistic characters tend to annoy me: they’re either riddled with cliches, using the autistic person as a device to make a feel-good point. Or worse, the autistic character is a a source of pity or seen as a burden. No thanks.
But in Greenwood’s hands, the character of Gentry is a person. He’s autistic, and his autism is singular to him. He’s not a cliche. And without making any clear conclusions, she presents a question my husband and I struggle with all the time: how much do you respect his independence and personhood despite his differences, even if it means bad things might happen? Or do you swoop in and protect him from an often cruel and unforgiving world because those differences make him so vulnerable, even if it means undermining his right to make his own choices for his own life?
Once again, Bryn Greenwood has given me a page-turner that was compelling to read and a story that I will be thinking about for a long, long time.
I loved her first book All the Ugly and Wonderful Things<\i>; it sparked one of the best book club discussion of all time. I was eager to read this until I saw that one of the characters is autistic. My son is autistic, and I normally steer clear. Novels with autistic characters tend to annoy me: they’re either riddled with cliches, using the autistic person as a device to make a feel-good point. Or worse, the autistic character is a a source of pity or seen as a burden. No thanks.
But in Greenwood’s hands, the character of Gentry is a person. He’s autistic, and his autism is singular to him. He’s not a cliche. And without making any clear conclusions, she presents a question my husband and I struggle with all the time: how much do you respect his independence and personhood despite his differences, even if it means bad things might happen? Or do you swoop in and protect him from an often cruel and unforgiving world because those differences make him so vulnerable, even if it means undermining his right to make his own choices for his own life?
Once again, Bryn Greenwood has given me a page-turner that was compelling to read and a story that I will be thinking about for a long, long time.