Before You Know Kindness by Chris Bohjalian

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
-Print: Available – (Bib info from Amazon website) COPYRIGHT: October 5, 2004 ([hardbound] first edition); ISBN-13: 978-1400047451; PUBLISHER: Shaye Areheart Books; LENGTH: 448
-Digital: (Bib info from Amazon website) COPYRIGHT: September 27, 2005 ([Kindle] Reprint edition); PUBLISHER: Vintage; ISBN: 9780062910721; File size 763 KB
*Audio: (Info from Libby) COPYRIGHT: 7-July-2004; PUBLISHER: Books on Tape; DURATION: approx. 17 hours; Unabridged (LAPL MP3)
Feature Film or tv: Not that I’m aware of.

SERIES: No
CHARACTERS: (Not comprehensive)
-Nan Seton: 70-year-old; Mother, Grandmother
-Spencer McCullough: Husband; Father; Communications Director and Spokesperson for FERAL (Lobbying group for animal causes)
-Catherine Mccullough: Spencer’s wife; Nan’s daughter
-Charlotte Mccullough: Spencer and Cahterine’s 12-year-old daughter
-John Seton: Lawyer; Hunter; Father of Willow; Husband of Sara; Son of Nan
-Sara Seton: Wife of John; Mother of Charlotte
-Willow Seton: John and 10-year-old daughter; Charlotte’s cousin

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
-Selection: Don (husband) and I were at a public library in Laguna Niguel. The Friends book store was closed but this was on the shelves right outside the bookstore. Don was intrigued, so I hunted the audio down through my Los Angeles Public Library subscription.
-About: A family challenged by one person’s cause that no one else believes in; another member’s desire to bond with colleagues and a newborn son by starting a new “sport” which is directly counter to the first person’s cause; common procrastination; the usual dysfunctions of inattentiveness to relationships; reckless youths; and issues that revolve around hunting.
-Liked: Well-developed characters; good plot.
-Disliked: Often over-the-top didacticism; length
-Overall: My husband and I liked it enough to be interested in reading more from this author. While this book primarily covers two sides of two interconnected issues pretty well, I don’t think it’s attempting to be completely objective, which isn’t to say it should.

AUTHOR:
Chris Bohjalian:
(Excerpt from Wikipedia) “Chris A. Bohjalian (Armenian: Քրիս Պոհճալեան) is an Armenian-American novelist and the author of 20 novels, including Midwives (1997), The Sandcastle Girls (2012), The Guest Room (2016), and The Flight Attendant (2018). Bohjalian's work has been published in over 30 languages, and three of his novels have been adapted into films. Bohjalian's The Flight Attendant has been adapted for a television drama starring Kaley Cuoco.[3][4]”

NARRATOR(S):
Susan Denaker
(From IMDb) “Susan Denaker is known for Girlfriend 19 (2014), Alex & Jaime (2017) and American Friends (1991).”
(From Penguin Random House) “Susan Denaker’s extensive theatre credits include numerous plays in the West End of London, national tours, and many English Rep companies, including a season with Alan Ayckbourn’s company in Scarborough. More recently in the United States, Susan has appeared in Our Town and Sweet Bird of Youth, both at the La Jolla Playhouse, and Breaking Legs at the Westport Playhouse.”

GENRE: Literature, Fiction

SUBJECTS: Vegetarians; Animal rights; Lobsters; Guns; Hunting; Crusades; Family relations

LOCATIONS: Sugar Hill, New Hampshire; northern Vermont
DEDICATION: “For the Blewer Women: Sandra, Cecilia, Victoria, and Julia”
EXCERPT: From: “Prologue”
“Cavitation
The bullet—cylindriform as a rocket but tapering to a point almost sharp enough to prick skin with a casual touch—was two and a half inches long when it was in its cartridge in the rifle. The shank was made of copper, and the expansion chamber would cause it to double in diameter upon impact. The tip was designed to swell upon contact as well, ripping apart the flesh and muscle and bone as it made its way to the elk’s or the bear’s or (most likely) the deer’s heart. It looked like a little missile.
The bullet did not hit Spencer McCullough in the chest that very last night in July, however, because that would have killed him pretty near instantly. Nor did it plunge into his abdomen, which—depending upon how much of his stomach, his liver, and his spleen were in harm’s way—would have killed him over the course of minutes. A thirty-ought-six—a .30-caliber bullet atop the classic cartridge case developed by the U.S. Army in 1906—turns bowels into pudding.
Instead, it ripped into the man’s body just above and to the side of his chest, slamming into him below his right shoulder. It shattered completely the scapula and his shoulder joint, demolished his rotator cuff (which would have been even more debilitating for his wife, Catherine, because she still gave a damn about her tennis serve), and mixed into a thick, sloppy soup the muscles that Spencer used to move his shoulder and lift his right arm. The bullet was traveling at two and a half times the speed of sound, and the tissue had to absorb the velocity: Consider the way a bullet does not appear to pierce a brick of Jell-O but, rather, causes it to explode.
What was of most importance to the two EMTs who arrived at the house at the very peak of Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, however, was that the bullet had also obliterated the first branch of the axillary artery—the superior thoracic artery—though as they were taking what remained of Spencer’s vitals near what remained of his snow peas that summer night in the garden they tended not to use words like axillary and thoracic. They used words like bleeder and terms like bleeding out, and Evan Seaver—the male of the pair—allowed himself a small assortment of expletives and invectives. Evan was two decades younger than his partner, a fifty-one-year-old first-response veteran with hair the color of hoarfrost that fell over her ears and rounded her skull like a helmet. Her name was Melissa Fearon, but everyone called her Missy Fearless. She ignored Evan’s occasional lapses in decorum that evening because he had never before seen a gunshot wound. He’d seen his share of grisly car and snowmobile accidents, and he had in fact been with her when they found the vacationing TV producer who’d been decapitated behind the wheel of the convertible he’d rented in Boston. But that gentleman was clearly dead—not dying—and so Evan hadn’t had to get too close or spend any time with the corpse.
Both EMTs were volunteers who did other things for a living. Evan worked at an electrical wire factory in nearby Lisbon, and Missy taught math at the high school in Littleton. On at least a half-dozen occasions she had pulled her own students from their dads’ toppled four-by-fours or their very own Geos, Escorts, and Corollas, the vehicles inevitably crinkled like the foil wrappers that folded themselves around sticks of chewing gum. She had dealt before with audible bleeding—hemorrhaging that seems absolutely torrential, the flow not in reality making the noise of a geyser but seeming to everyone present as if it is—and seen people (grown-ups and teenagers and, alas, children) impaled on the shards of twisted metal that once were parts of automobiles.
Spencer was well into the first symptoms of shock when they arrived: He was cold and clammy and pale, and he was having great trouble breathing. Consequently, he was what Missy Fearon and her more seasoned associates referred to as a scoop-and-run. She and Evan did little at the edge of the garden where they found Spencer (his body half in the lupine that bordered the vegetables and half in the ugly, knotted vines on which once had grown snow peas) other than apply a thick, gauzy trauma dressing to the wound—and then lots of hand pressure—slip a stiff plastic cervical collar around his neck to immobilize his head, and roll him onto a backboard. Then they were off to the hospital in Hanover. Somehow Missy managed to stick a saline IV into Spencer in the ambulance while continuing to keep weight on the wound. She thought of how the EMTs sat on patients or jumped on the rolling gurneys to maintain pressure in the TV dramas, but she couldn’t imagine actually doing such a thing, especially with this poor guy. She’d be sitting on jam.
As for the emergency room physicians and the surgeon who, fortunately, lived within minutes of the hospital, once they had Spencer McCullough stabilized their greatest concern was the reality that before shattering all that bone in his shoulder and upper back, the bullet had done a pretty fair job of pulverizing the brachial plexus—the network of nerves that sends signals from the spine to the arm and the hand. Recall the Jell-O: Meaningful reconstruction was completely out of the question Assuming they could even save Spencer’s right arm (which was no guarantee), it was highly unlikely that it would ever do a whole lot more than flop at his side like a scarecrow’s.
Inevitably, Spencer was right-handed. And so even though he wasn’t the athlete his wife was (the rotator cuff was among the least of the surgeon’s problems), this would be a severe disability. Even though he worked at a desk—Missy overheard enough as she worked to get Spencer into the ambulance to understand that he was a public relations guy for some animal rights organization in New York City, and this house he was at was his mother-in-law’s—it was going to be a very long time before anything came easy to him again.
Once the physicians had started pumping the units and units (and still more units) of blood into him, done a chest X-ray, and gotten the only good news that Spencer McCullough’s body was going to offer that evening—there was no hemorrhaging inside the thorax and a lung had not collapsed—they set to work trying to control the bleeding in his shoulder and washing out the wound. This meant, among other tasks, meticulously removing all those tiny fragments of bone, which were now little more than contaminants. It meant using a Gore-Tex sleeve that looked a bit like a miniature version of a radiator hose from a car engine to reconnect the severed arteries, and then—when they needed yet more tubing—stealing a part of a vein from his leg.
Weeks later, they might do whatever reconstructive surgery they could. They might perform a nerve-cable graft, taking nerves from the part of the man’s leg where they had just taken a vein so that a portion of the pudding of sheared links in the nearly invisible wires in his right shoulder might begin to grow back. Or, if necessary, they might amputate the arm. In all likelihood, it was going to be completely useless. No, it would be worse than useless. It would be a hindrance, a limp and flaccid tentacle that hung by his side, caught on counters and tabletops, and banged against him when he tried to move his body in any manner that was even remotely athletic.
Still, Spencer McCullough was alive. And if someone had said to either Missy Fearon or Evan Seaver before they arrived at the house on Sugar Hill that a guy there had taken a bullet from a thirty-ought-six a couple of inches from his heart, they both would have assumed that they could have driven from the scene to the hospital at the speed limit with their siren and two-tone switched off, because all that was going to happen when they arrived was that the body was going to be declared dead and put on ice for the ME.
Only when they had deposited Spencer at the hospital and he had been rushed into the OR did either of them have the time to voice the questions that had crossed both their minds: Why the hell was there a loaded deer rifle on the property three and a half months before hunting season? And why in the name of heaven was a twelve-year-old kid—the guy’s own daughter, for God’s sake!—firing potshots into the garden on the last night in July?”

RATING:
4 stars

STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
3/27/23 to 5/9/23 ( )

Recommended by the owner of a quaint bookstore, I expected good things.
But, alas. However, as a bedtime read this book worked; I never wanted "just one more chapter".

Let the record show that I read other, finer works along side this title and it suffered greatly by comparison to stronger texts. ( )

I have become a fan of Bohjalian. He can be trusted to deliver characters that are complicated, flawed, and very real. How often can someone argue both sides of an issue and do it well? Bohjalian does it masterfully. Of course, we aren't impartial in our views, because he tackles subjects that touch our own lives, no matter who we are. ( )

Chris Bohjalian is one of my favorite writers. But this book has me thinking I may not read anything else by him. The reasons are personal but also general.

When I read Midwives I was impressed by the accuracy and details, and the lack of judgment. Having given birth to my younger daughter with the help of two midwives I was familiar with many of the issues surrounding them then and, to some extent, now. I was therefore impressed with the evenhanded, compassionate approach Bohjalian took to the subject.

In Before You Know Kindness, Bohjalian touches another area I know well. Unfortunately, he freely gives in to his own prejudices and does not do the research I would have expected. He clearly dug into the medical, legal, and firearms aspects of the story, but his work with animal rights activists and veganism in general was greatly limited.

The story: an important leader of an animal rights organization that goes by "FERAL" is shot accidentally by his young daughter. Spencer McCullough has antagonized many with his views, including his wife and his relatives, and he is seen as self-centered and single-minded, caring more about animals than about people. The incident occurs while the small family of Spencer, his wife Catherine, and daughter Charlotte, are staying at the New Hampshire summer home of Nan Seton, Catherine's mother. They are joined there by Catherine's brother John Seton and his family, Sara and Willow. Charlotte is 12 and Willow 10. The rifle Charlotte was holding belongs to John Seton, who has only recently taken up hunting (without telling his brother-in-law).

The shotgun blast hits Spencer in the right shoulder, effectively destroying the joint and leaving his right arm useless. There is little hope of full recovery. Initially there is doubt he will even survive. But survive he does, and begins, haltingly, taking steps to become independent again.

Spencer is not a patient man and the idea of having to rely on someone else grates on him. He isn't easy to live with - either before or after the accident. But his organization sees an opportunity in the newsworthy story of an animal rights leader shot by a hunting rifle.

The real meat of the story, and I use that word deliberately, is in the changes that take place within Spencer and his relationship with others.

Where I find fault is in the portrayal of what it is to be vegan: the choices one makes, the effects on others, as well as the portrayal of Spencer's family as essentially captive vegans.

A vegan myself, I have experienced the gamut of misunderstandings and misrepresentations of this way of life for many years. Vegans are not a cohesive, homogenized group. Like any random group of people, vegans come in all colors, shapes, sizes, and temperaments. So Spencer being hotheaded and self-righteous is not that hard to imagine. It is a bit harder to imagine that his whole FERAL team is manipulative and deceitful in the pursuit of their goals. In other words, everyone in this novel who has deliberately chosen veganism is hard to like or understand. Not so vegetarians (those who eat dairy and eggs). More than once, Spencer's choices are portrayed as extreme when really all they are is vegan.

Bohjalian takes every opportunity to malign materials and foods that vegans supposedly consume. He creates a soy margarine that Willow hates, says it has a bitter aftertaste. He attacks the shoes a vegan lawyer wears because, obviously, leather is better. He points out that FERAL's lawyer (not a vegan) carries a plastic briefcase in her meetings with FERAL but prefers a leather one for her other clients. Even pillows get a workout - heaven forbid that a pillow not made with feathers or down could possibly be comfortable. Never mind that the majority of people, not just vegans, sleep on these so-called inferior pillows.

Where Bohjalian falls down in terms of knowledge is in not actually knowing what is in these horrific inferior vegan products. Vegan margarine is notable for what it doesn't contain, not what it does. I would gladly challenge anyone to compare it to any other margarine and determine (blind test) that it tastes funny. It isn't noticeably different in any way. And shoes? Look around. Can you tell which are leather and which are not and if the nonleather ones are obviously inferior? In many cases nonleather shoes outwear leather, are easier to care for, and are just as comfortable. There is no reason to assume that a product must contain animal products in order to be a good product. The constant digs in this book are tiring and ill-informed. The cream of this crop is the bread made with soy flour. What is wrong with wheat??? Soy flour makes lousy bread, although it has other good uses. Apparently the author does not know that wheat is vegan?

The other part of this vegan-shaming is Catherine. She married Spencer. Either she pretended to be vegetarian at the time or she took it up for Spencer's sake. Given that he has always had this animal-orientation she could hardly have missed it. It makes me wonder. What I conclude is that the theme is that this fixation of Spencer's - on animals - is blocking his ability to care for his family. His daughter generally takes up the animal rights flag, yet she feels so left out because she has never visited a zoo or an aquarium. Give me a break. If this is so, then she doesn't actually care for the animals after all, or has a misguided idea of what that caring means.

Overall, then, I had difficulty comprehending why Spencer and Catherine would have married in the first place, and I had more difficulty believing that every single person in this family is totally ignorant of what it means to be vegan, that every one had that view that "if it's vegan it's horrible". News, folks: tomatoes are vegan. Bagels are usually vegan. Much of what everyone eats every day is vegan. Much of what everyone wears is vegan. Further, when one is vegan one doesn't spend necessarily spend time looking for products that mimic animal products. We just get on with life.

Because so much time is spent in this book accusing the one vegan of being extreme and ridiculing every aspect of his life, I had a hard time with it. I wanted to like the characters. I liked the two girls generally. I wanted to feel an attachment to their journey through this difficult time. I couldn't get there. Others have gotten there, probably because they are not vegans and were able to dismiss the inaccuracies easily. I know I have raged on here forever but I just couldn't get past this aspect. Just be glad I didn't get into the inaccuracies about hunting.
----------somewhat spoiler alert-----------------

If you plan to read the book perhaps you should not read this part until you've finished.

I had difficulty also with the lawsuit. FERAL wants Spencer to sue the gun manufacturer because a) the gun was faulty, causing a shell to remain in the chamber, unable to be extracted normally, or b) the design of the gun was faulty because it does not permit unloading in one step instead of two, or even c) the design is faulty because ammunition has to be designed so it can't get stuck and the fine tolerances mean it may not be. The intent of the lawsuit was to connect the horrific damage done to Spencer to the damage hunters do to deer - particularly those who survive a shot, only to die painfully days or weeks later. FERAL wants the public to know how horrible hunting is and somehow this is supposed to make that point. It always seemed weak to me. Who would bring such a suit? I can't imagine it.

Also, the case is made that it would be embarrassing to FERAL to publicize that one of its leaders was shot by a member of his own family, by a gun owned by a brother-in-law. I know no animal rights persons or groups who insist that their whole families, especially in-laws, must adhere to their points-of-view.

I also wasn't entirely sold on Spencer's transformation. I can see a change taking place after a horrific incident like this, but it was hard for me to track it here. It was almost like an epiphany. I certainly didn't see any awakenings among the family toward animals. No epiphanies in that area, naturally. As is less often the case in the media today, this book maintains the tone that vegans are rightly objects of ridicule. I am, as I said at the top, disappointed in this author, who never questioned his own beliefs. ( )

New England family dealing with tragedy after a father is accidentally shot by his twelve year old daughter. ( )