Inside [Paperback]

Child born of violence, Myrden is released after fourteen years of incarceration for murder after a DNA test reverses the court's judgment. Returning home, his life constricted by years of containment, this man remains behind bars, reporters with intrusive cameras at every turn, an unfaithful wife, a friend who testified against him, and best friend, Randy, with a ready laugh and another beer. The only good thing a granddaughter, Caroline. Everything outside too bright, too loud, too large. His mind resists integrating a barrage of emotions held too long in check. In bursts of prose, Harvey offers this fragile psychological construct, a broken man's attempt to connect with his precious granddaughter, to overcome his destiny, to sample a little tenderness and affection, maybe even love, to step into a world devoid of shadows. But such a place does not exist for this man, only the inevitability of careless brutality.

After training himself to exist only on the interior, to react to nothing, it is all but impossible for Myrden to relate to an exterior terrain. To face the family, the friends, the strangers who gather at his wife's house, all waiting to see what he will do next, when rage temper will escape reason and erupt. To face his children's resentment, all raised in penury, victimhood and violence. This is his legacy, the only ray of light Caroline's sweet face, her child's voice calling, "Poppy! Poppy!" Only this little girl softens his heart, offering hope he dare not entertain. These faces are familiar, genetically embedded with failure: "They were heart-mangled. It was their family legacy." Emptiness of home and spirit, broken homes and shattered dreams, "poverty with five hundred channels".

Is it possible to be a hero in such a place? Myrden knows only the sound of fist on flesh, generation to generation, the innocent trapped in a self-fulfilling cycle. Thrust from prison into the same dysfunctional environment, nothing has changed but time and the steely self-control necessary to survive. His eyes on the prize, seven-year-old Caroline, Myrden desires only to provide for her and his daughter, Jackie, to offer a future from the spoils of wrongful imprisonment. Unfortunately, Caroline's father, the venal Willis Grom, stands in the way. As Myrden's internal pressure builds, Willis' brutality toward his family escalates, ending finally in the predictable. But what of the man so recently released from one horror to another, confined by circumstance and lack of opportunity, his settlement a temporary palliative greedily consumed by a faithless wife?

In spare sentences that land like blows to the heart, compassion bred out of Myrden since a nightmarish childhood, Harvey dissects the dark side of humanity that some will recognize, others not. Painful, brutal and honest, not for the faint of heart. Luan Gaines/2007.

What is it like for a man who expected to die in prison to suddenly find himself back on the outside after fourteen years served for a murder that DNA testing now proves was not his doing? Will he be able to control his rage, the same rage that he learned to depend on in prison for his very survival, so that he does not commit a crime of violence that returns him to lockup? Can he tolerate the leeches, including his wife, who are so eager to help him spend the false-imprisonment settlement he will soon collect from the Canadian government?

In his novel, "Inside," Kenneth J. Harvey places himself in the mind of just such a character, Myrden (a man whose first name is never revealed), and does it so effectively that many of those questions are answered. Harvey, in fact, tells Myrden's story largely through the man's own thought processes, a technique that leaves the reader standing squarely in Myrden's shoes, seeing life through his eyes, and feeling all of his emotions and frustrations. The book, in fact, is almost completely written in sentence fragments of less than five words and reading it is like listening to Myrden think out loud.

Myrden is the first to admit that he was not exactly an innocent man when he was sent to prison for murder. At times he is not completely sure, despite the new DNA evidence, that he did not commit the crime and wonders if the real mistake is that he is being released. But he is grateful for the large settlement he receives from the government and is eager to use it to better the lives of his daughter and his granddaughter, Caroline, the true love of his life.

Sadly, Myrden, a man who has learned the trick of depending only upon himself for survival, finds it near impossible to relate to a wife who seems only to care about the cash windfall headed their way, his old crowd, or the poverty that surrounds them all. Wanting nothing more than to be left alone, he is forced instead to deal with the newspaper reporters who hound him for a quote and old friends who see him as a local celebrity with cash to blow. His immersion into the hard world from which he had been snatched and imprisoned, a world in which he is surrounded by reckless people with little to lose, the only world he has ever known, is inevitable despite his best intentions.

Myrden is a man who wants nothing more than to make life a little easier for those he loves, his way of making up for past mistakes before it is too late. He has some small successes but, when others begin to interfere with his larger goals, he has to decide how far he is willing to go to put things right and whether or not he is prepared to suffer the consequences.

"Inside" explores a world that, thankfully, few of Harvey's readers will have experienced firsthand. It is a brutal place filled with people who have lost all hope that things will ever be better for them and their families, a place dominated by addictions and those willing to do most anything to feed them, a world in which second chances do not often turn out well. This is not a pretty novel but it is well worth the effort.

You're in the boxing ring. Taking hits to the jaw. No word wasted. Nothing extraneous. Spare. Brutal. Tough. Why use a long sentence with flow and structure when five will do?

Half of "Inside" is style. I'm emulating here. The other half is a portrait. A portrait of man, Myrden, making a transition. He's trapped between the "inside" of prison and his experiences on the outside. He's trapped by his own "inside."

This is stripped-down stuff. At times, I was worn out reading. So many stops and starts.

A sample:

"Fourteen years you get past those plans. You lose your plans. People make plans for you. You become almost nothing. Nothing to no one. People forget about you. You forget. You disappear. Up at eight. Lights out eleven-thirty."

Another:

"The police. The police officers. The welfare office. The woman behind the desk. Why are you here? What can we do for you? Is employment not an option? She wanted the information. She asked the questions. But she couldn't have cared less."

"Inside" reads like daubs of paint in furious brush strokes. The style breaks many alleged "rules" about writing. There is no formula at work here. Harvey writes what he sees, hears and feels on behalf of Myrden. It's blunt.

I enjoyed seeing the rules broken or at least tortured. Harvey tests our patience, but that unsettled feeling gnaws at you the same way it's probably chewing up Myrden as he struggles to find an even keel on the outside. The ending is rough, bleak. I'm not giving anything away. With no rainbows at the outset, I certainly didn't expect anything but darkness at the end. Worth reading for style alone.

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