This book was like drifting through a party of interesting people most of whom you don’t like and overhearing just parts of their conversation. Then your friend whispers a word or two of educated conjecture to fill in the gaps. You feel like you know what’s going on, and maybe you do, but the bull often piles up high at parties and no one is interrupting the chat to get at the facts. I don’t doubt that much of what I read in this book is true but I am willing to admit that part of the reason for that feeling is based on my personal expectations that the worst about Trump is likely true. There is a heaping helping of insider info here about the first year of the Trump presidency that should make anyone feel anywhere from uneasy to downright fearful about the future. This I suspect if one of the reasons for the title. Most likely the title refers Trump’s campaign strategy of scaring voters rather than appeal to the better angels of their character. The one-word title also stands as a stark demarcation between Trump and the previous administrations message of HOPE. When this book was published, much of the media coverage focused on how staffers working within the White House were guiding Trump away from trouble as best they could by maneuvering around him or taking advantage of his short attention span to simply remove items that might allow him to do harm. The book covers Trump’s first year in office and these activities are very much in evidence. Also, you can see the steady change of the guard around Trump as people are fired, resign or hauled off to the hoosegow. The climate grows more intemperate after these changes and the worst seems to be coming. This simmering angst inspired a nod to Hunter S. Thompson by wondering if the sequel to FEAR might not just be entitled LOATHING. This book reads fast--moving from one scandal to another pulling you along like the Lusitania looking for a torpedo. As often happens in life one is left with the hope of a strong cleansing rain that will eventually come and wash the mud from our faces, out of our eyes and away from us for good. But hold on, it’s going to be a minute.

A clean and lovely tale of how love should and will prevail. Nothing else really matters. Should be a part of every tiny tot's library so they can read it to their parents. Just made me smile. In fact, after reading it, found myself singing MAKE ME SMILE (COME UP & SEE ME) the minor glam rock classic by Steve Harley most easily found on the VELVET GOLDMINE soundtrack.

Where we see the world most clearly is in our mind. We take in visions of the happenings around us, blend it with who we are and where we’ve been and create a synthesis reality—then we reside there. This is how we find some comfort, some security in ourselves and decide how we fit into the greater world around us. Some launch themselves into the world from this comfort zone, socializing quite freely. Others don’t. For those more reticent, the interior world retains a greater importance—a place to retreat. So, imagine you are divorced thirty-eight-year-old raging alcoholic cut off more and more from those around him. The interior life, though unfocused and ragged, is largely what you have left. This was Mark Hogancamp before he was beaten nearly to death—when he finally emerged from a coma and eventually the hospital, he would find that the few threads that still bound him to life did not include his memory.

While the book deals with the assault, most of the book reveals how Hogancamp rebuilt his life. His interior life swept away, he created an exterior one to replace it. Using a childlike imagination focused through a damaged adult lens, the doll inhabited WWII town of Marwencol was created. As if refilling an emptied bookshelf one story at a time, Hogancamp lived through the characters in this town as the good guys representing his friends battled Nazi bad guys standing in for those who attacked him. He captured these stories with marvelously detailed photographs—perfectly angled shots of precisely posed dolls create moments at once intimate, dramatic and cinematic. These photos populate the second half of the book and were what ultimately brought him to the attention of the world at large (including a major Photo Exhibit, this book, a very well received documentary and recently a less well received major motion picture). Despite such attention, he still zealously maintains his privacy.

The photographs wield a strange power. Each is of an almost perfect moment that seems to tell an entire story. Yet each could also be the opening scene of an epic. Hogancamp’s scrutiny of every detail, his day after day of attention layered over the town like brush strokes, have hewn life into the hard plastic of these dolls. Th e power is like a tide that escapes Hogancamp and crashes upon Marwencol only to recede back into him once more. That give and take is life. It was pure chance that this story escaped into the limelight. How many Marwencols are out there in other forms that we will never know about. How many people yearn for them but don’t know where to look. How many people live one step away from the rest of the world.

Ratings are always somewhat personal and inexact. In this case if the book were viewed merely clinically, perhaps I would have given it 3 or 4 stars instead of 5. In this case I have chosen to rate according to impact. I was moved by the world building involved and staggered by how that world spun once set in motion.

A mess, but an entertaining one. As if Jack Kerouac got into a brawl with Hunter S. Thompson while they co-wrote the script to Repo Man—but less filling. A wild road trip steeped in Islamic youth culture that involves battling zombies, kidnapping a Hollywood celebrity and debating the value of Muslim Emo vs. Muslim Punk while seeking to do something about it all. I didn’t always follow the Islamic goings on, sometimes googling furiously for context, but I did appreciate the brisk and approachable writing style. I was reminded of the feeling of being young and needing to take part in a world that you are just discovering. The sex, language and violence will not be to everybody’s taste, but they are a part of the worldview. The inherent value of following Islam is understood to be a given and thankfully not a moment is spent justifying its presence in America. Being Islamic post 9/11 is to encounter many conflicts. In much of the book, the characters lurch from one battle to another as if trying to figure out which ones are important and which are just crazy distractions. The book concludes with a not so subtle lesson that what you don’t respect may bite you—not every battle is in front of you but rather sometimes occur inside.

Classic story well rendered. Artwork suitably dark and expressionistic-ish though not completely to my taste. Requirement of the form that there is some slimming of the story but the artist Kuper does a solid job hitting the key emotional notes though the music never quite soars.

The concept of someone with an uncontrollable urge to kill channeling that urge toward killing only evil people fascinates me. That someone is Dexter Morgan and we have something in common. Neither one of us were completely satisfied by the goings on in this novel. While Dexter will keep on killing to try and quench his thirst, I won’t be reading any further hoping to quench mine.

I first became aware of Dexter though the TV series. I had been curious about it for some time—when I finally binge watched the entire run I found it to be the very definition of erratic. Some of it was exhilarating, marvelous work but some of it was so mind-numbingly dumb that I questioned the existence of a benevolent God. While I thought the series ended on a high note, the final shot of the final scene was perfect, I couldn’t help wondering if the books would be better.

Regarding this first book in the series—meh! It managed to keep my interest tethered but never bound. If the TV series swung high and low, the book towed a modest steady line. In order to kill evil people Dexter has to find evil people and replacing some form of detective work with hunches and dreams got old really fast. The prose and pacing were fair and a tense scene in a house under construction was compelling and pardon the turn of phrase but well-constructed but contrasting his dark mind against the sunny Miami locale was soil left untilled. Maybe the author was thinking series from the beginning and thought he had only to whet the appetite with a first book. I would have preferred the whole meal.

Often when someone becomes ill, their identity is supplanted by their illness. The people around them no longer see a life in progress just the diagnosis. This bothers me about this sometimes compelling, often not graphic novel. We have lost the MOM to her CANCER while she is still alive. This is even reflected in the title where the key word is CANCER and not MOM. I can’t think that this was the intention of the author, this feeling of detachment—where instead of being the earth, MOM was relegated to the moon.

This book, however, does have some strengths. It might have been titled CANCER FAMILY instead of MOM’S CANCER to better reflect what it does best. There are three adult children. Seeing how each goes through their own stages in different ways and how they come together or don’t come together over the illness is to finally be invited into the story. The siblings are rendered with an honesty that makes them feel real. I wish that had been extended to the MOM.

I have been part of a cancer family several times, including my own mom, and expected this to hit me harder than it did. I actually hoped it would hit me hard as a means of remembering and grieving. Instead, I felt like I was reading about a plane crash from the point of view of the land that was hit rather than the people on board.