Customer Reviews

The Boomerang Kid: A Novel

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With most of its action set in South Florida The Boomerang Kid is a comforting exploration of what it means to be a family, the power of love, and the all-embracing need for emotional security. At fifty-one Maura Ostryder never imagined that her twenty-seven year old son Kai would be returning to the fold. Emotionally damaged and unable to live in the Outer Banks, North Carolina, Kai seeks solace in the home of his childhood, desperate outrunning everything he's left. Only the leaving of Robin, his new boyfriend is his one regret, but he knows he most escape his bad year and his growing addiction to pain killers. It is imperative, however that Kai return to his medications for his bi-polar disorder, even as he feels weighed down by his never-ending responsibilities, that of finding work as a carpenter and dealing with his increasingly confused affections for Robin, who almost overnight seems to have become the love of his life. Certainly his mother's home is seen as a refuge from potential calamity, a place where Kai can seek to redefine himself and the relationships with those around him.

Maura is at first surprised when she gets the worrying phone call from her ex-husband Rhett telling her that Kai will be returning, the news coming at a strange and positive time when things have been going so well for her. Even as she senses that her only son is slipping, her own life has recently been full of blessings. Just a month earlier, Maura had discovered she was pregnant again. After the initial shock, she has decided she was quietly pleased. She feels nothing but affection and love for her new partner Matt, their lives as neatly arranged "as the bowl of red apples on the dining room table." Maura just wishes that Kai would finally get his act together even as she remains haunted by Kai's suicide attempt when he was only nine, the signs of her son's uniqueness and then the shifting diagnosis, each grimmer than the last, and that of the final rapid-cycling conclusion of Type ii bipolar disorder.

After the diagnosis Maura's life became more than ever about her son as she found herself bending to shield him from the emotional winds that seemed to come at him like a hurricane. Now, back at home, and surrounded by all that is familiar, Kai is drawn to his mother's understanding ways while also deeply cognizant this only she can perhaps help him through this difficult and emotional period. Gravitating between mania and fatigue, Kai begins to talk to his mother, his hands trembling as he smokes and drinks endless cups of coffee. But even as he sits in Maura's kitchen, staring vacantly out over the bay window across the table, he just can't seem to erase the tape and its endless loop that torments him afresh with every repetition, his moods descending and cycling ever more rapidly from low to high, then to low.

Something is certainly wrong or he wouldn't have decided to come home. Maura's mission is to understand her son again even as she must cope with her own flurrying needs and the realization that Kai has gone off his meds and that he's probably hurt Robin terribly. A deeply empathetic woman, Maura understands that its only natural that her son would seek comfort from painkillers so that he's not anxious and scared all the time. Certainly their journey is one of love and understanding as Maura and Kai must navigate a complicated set of circumstances. It isn't hopeless - Maura had seen him through worse and she'd see him through this. But it is in this delicately written domestic drama that the bonds of mother and child are only ever loosened and never broken. Maura wonders how her son is going to resolve his relationship with Robin and go about rebuilding his life in this world of his adulthood. Meanwhile, she must continue to deal with Matt`s needs: "a man of action, and not a lot for glib promises," Matt proves to be so wonderful and understanding about Kai even as he has initial reservations about integrating Kai into their lives.

Much of the action in the Boomerang Kid takes place in Maura's kitchen, in her living room, or on her porch as Kai quietly sits and contemplates the brown prescription bottle and the lovely little blue pills in his chest of draws right underneath his bedroom window. A gateway to just letting him float and think, Kai must find a way to overcome their lure, a feat that can only be accomplished when Robin, by the grace of his good intentions, turns up in center of this drama, accepting an invite to spend Thanksgiving weekend with Kai, Maura, and Matt and Maura's gentle but solitary boss Bill Kellogg. All the while, Kai secretly hopes that his lover will move down to be with him for good.

Jay Quinn seems to capture perfectly the essence of a conflicted young man, both at war with his sexuality and his bipolar disorder, and that of his mother who gravitates sometimes selfishly between wanting to be free of Kai's anxiety yet constantly bound by her motherly love. Naturally her life has become so intertwined with Matt's that she has a nagging sense that Kai's return isn't going to be as easy as she had hoped. While the business of her son frequently keeps nagging at Maura, "like a dingy tied up at her stern," Matt remains her pillar of trust and a trusted soul mate who is virtually irreplaceable. For Kai though, there are far too many memories and this sense of emptiness that threatens to claim him. Perhaps it is only through his bourgeoning love for Robin that he can perhaps finally put some of his long-held demons to rest. Mike Leonard 2008.