Customer Reviews

The Adventures Of Flash Jackson: A Novel

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I gotta say I was disappointed. Haley of Part One was an interesting character; I was hoping to discover more of her in Part Two. Instead, the story goes in another direction entirely. Now that I've finished the book (and at the risk of giving away the plot too badly), it started going downhill after the grandmother was written out. Moreover, some loose ends are leftover at the conclusion (for example: in Part One, Miss Powell's personal life seems to be loaded with innuendo; in Part Two, she's just sort of "there" as a secondary character).
The last 25% of the book seemed predictable. I went from "She seems kinda neat" at the end of Part One to "Who cares!" at the end of Part Two.

I have to admit that I did not complete this novel. The overly chatty, talk to the reader style made it apparent to me that I was not the target audience (an adult who reads obscure literature & speculative fiction) even though this was in the adult section. The excessive swearing and enthusiasim felt like sloppy and lazy writing to me. However, teenagers who normally read Charles de Lint, Holly Black and Emma Bull looking for light, escapist fiction may want to check this book out, as it deals with identity, ethnicity and spiritual issues with a light hearted touch.

I personally recommend anything by Charles de Lint or Marion Zimmer Bradley over this, if you are a more selective reader.

This book veered into a dramatic turn and took me by surprise, very different! If you feel it starts slow, please give it a chance. It was a moving coming of age story with action, romance, self-realization and best of all, magic.

This book is a fun read. Kowalski excels at creating an isolation in which magic can flourish for his characters. In Haley Bombauer's case, this magic is literal, and she participates in it. Yes, the girl is a witch.

The setting is well-realized, the characters developed. Haley is a kick in the pants. There's neighbors and horses and weather and the freedom and boredom of small town living. But I didn't like everything about this book. Haley teeters between childhood and adulthood, and it shows in her diction, which at times becomes a veering mishmash of gee-golly, expletives and look-it-up-in-the-OED. The juxtapositions made my head spin, but completely charmed my 17 year-old daughter. Since she's Haley's age, I think Kowalski is on to something.

Haley's coming-of-age elements are imbued with magic in the way that Billy Mann's (the hero of Eddie's [ ]and Somewhere South of Here) were imbued with history. This writer makes an awareness of family history a huge part of his characters' emerging identities. That, along with the gentle "women can do/be/have everything" message, make this an interesting (and conversation-encouraging) read for young women.

Unlike most stories using "Book 1" and "Book 2" as an arbitrary way of dividing the story into sections, in The Adventures of Flash Jackson, Book 2 seems like almost a completely different girl and story than before.

Haley Bombauer is a feisty and lovable heroine, who has always been a tomboy and plans on staying one for life. She's sick of her mother and gossipy small town neighbours trying to get her to be more ladylike. I found her views on everything amusing and fresh.

When Haley falls off the roof of her barn and breaks her leg, she's looking at a long, boring summer. I thought this book would be about her coming to terms with her injury, her father's death, her friend Frankie's schizophrenia. It's not. This is not just a coming of age story. It morphs into something reminiscent of "Nell", where she moves into the woods with her reclusive grandmother and shuts herself off from society for almost a year. As much as some readers will probably be weirded out by the drastic changes in plot and character, I was fascinated by the stories about herbal lore and how her grandmother is actually an age old spirit inhabiting the magical woods (I will say it once again: This is not your average coming of age story! It looks like general fiction, but it becomes fantasy almost).

If you told me how it ended when I first started the book, I would have been shocked beyond belief, but by the time I got there, I was used to the changes and found it really interesting. This book is certainly different, but this reader enjoyed it immensely.

I had thought this was going to be a funny book about a girl growing up, but it is actually a weird story of what a man thinks it would be like to be a girl growing up. The plot is completely unbelieveable, even by magical standards. The use of profanity, which is supposed to show how Haley is a tomboy, is outdated and badly timed. The sex scene could have only been written by a man, because a 17 year old girl would have never found that first experience anything but miserable. I was really sorry the book wasn't better as it started out with promise.

I actually got to meet this author when he did a book show at my local book store. His first book Eddies Bastard ranks as one of the best novels I have ever read. This book didn't dissapoint. The book is about a girl Haney Bombauer which through me off because Eddies Bastard is about a boy growing up and after my girlfriend just broke up with me I really didn't want to hear about a girl's life. I went ahead and read it and this book is awesome. I have given it to 3 people and they all loved it. You will fall in love with Haneys personality and the charachters that pop up in the book will make you laugh.