Customer Reviews

Josie and Jack: A Novel

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the west is a scraggly. scratchy bush that snags as you walk by it- and holds you within its grasp- we jokingly call it a "Wait a minute" bush...Josie and Jack is a "Wait a minute" book for the same reasons- it snags you from the first paragraph- holds you securely and won't let you go til you finish the book as quickly as possible. Darkly consuming and very addictive- Kelly Braffet is the new literary drug! A very good read proving story telling is still alive and well. Bravo!!

This is a very good first novel, by author Kelly Braffet. The story is centered around siblings Jack and Josie.

The plot, no spoilers...

The story starts out with a description of 19 year old Jack, and 17 year old Josie. They are the exceptionally attractive children of an eccentric, rage filled professor, and a deceased, mentally ill mother. They live with the professor in isolation, in an old home on a hill, where they have been home schooled.

The story really takes off when these two decide to leave home....

This is a dark story, and is a like a mix of the works of V.C. Andrews, and Ruth Rendell.

There is a sense of impending doom throughout the book, as we follow the story of the charismatic Jack, and the shy Josie.

For those who like psychological thrillers, and tales of eccentric, sociopathic and wounded people who lose control of their lives, this is definitely the book for you.

Recommended, and I am looking for to Braffet's next book.

Isolated and incestuous, Josie and Jack are inseparable teenage siblings who when faced with the necessity to function in a larger world stumble disastrously. Their story of hermetic love fueled by wanton self-indulgence of epic proportionality takes place in the almost complete absence of parenting. Mother, whose elusive presence in the lives of her children is magnified by her absence, has obliterated herself suicidally when Josie and Jack are four and six years of age respectively. And their frighteningly abusive, megalomaniacal father is home only on weekends throughout the years when guidance and care are so critical to the development of character and the values by which to structure one's life. Furthermore, the children are excused from attending school as father delusionally believes that what he has to impart in the way of grandiose instruction of esoteric, paranoidly tinged subject matter somehow suffices as a curriculum with which to prepare his offspring for their future lives. The mix of perverse love kindled in a vacuum, prodigious amounts of alcohol and pharmaceuticals, and misguided efforts to promote and protect a precious sense of overweening self-importance in this truncated family of three inevitably detonates in Kelly Braffet's first novel in ways that never fail to surprise and astonish. Braffert has crafted an exhilarating narrative that speeds toward its explosive conclusion just as a car driven by an intoxicated madman might careen down the wrong direction of a six lane superhighway. To say the least, Josie And Jack is keenly observed, psychologically astute, and deadly accurate in its depiction of what will transpire when children are led to buy into the lie that they are so special they can function outside of natural law. Transgression as an expression of disdain for basic limits in interpersonal relations almost always ends in exquisite suffering and emotional chaos. With Kelly Braffet we encounter a master at delineating this splintered terrain of pain and ineluctable sorrow.

Kelly Braffet's debut novel is the kind of book you remember for a long time after you've put it down. It's creepy and dark, but the central character, Josie, puts a remarkably level-headed spin on the madness around her. Josie is one of the most weirdly endearing characters I've met in fiction in quite some time - and her sexy, twisted brother Jack is one of the most indelible. Josie and Jack is a must read!

I originally bought this book for my friend on her birthday. I began to read the first few pages in the bookstore and was instantly hooked. I took it home, plopped down on my bed and stayed there until I was finished with the entire book; it was impossible to put down. It is a twisted, sadistic and engrossing first novel. I reccomend it to anyone who loves a good page-turner.

This was such a good book! I can't express how much I loved it-I can't wait for Kelly Braffet's new novel to come out. You get so involved with the book you won't want to put it down-I literally had to tear myself away from it just to do regular things like eat and sleep! I reccomend Josie and Jack to anyone! Terrific Read!

With Josie and Jack, the ingenious teenage children who pass into the dark woods of this modern take on the Hansel and Grethel fairy tale, Kelly Braffet could not have created a more engaging pair of subjects for her first novel. Their background is delightfully lurid - the offspring of a mad woman and a sour physics professor, they have been raised in seclusion and homeschooled - but Josie and Jack are eerily real. Naive and strange and lonely and dangerous and, best of all, unencumbered by typical moralities, they show us our world through new eyes. And for the most part, it's not a pretty sight.

I can't remember the last time I read a literary debut that was so free of pretension, so assured, and so exciting.

The only thing I regret about having read this book is the rapid pace in which I turned the pages. I could have stayed at home with those kids for eternity. Unfortunately, like them, I had to get on with "real life" in the city. Read it!

What if a boy and girl were brought up in isolation from the outside community? The mother is dead, and the father, a university professor is gone from the home five days a week. Dad home schools the children up through their high school years. Except for grocery runs the two of them are alone. Author Braffet is intrigued by this idea, and her view is that the twosome would develop not just a bond with each other, but would develop an unusually strong loving relationship. How strong? Well they seem to have no problem seeing each other naked, and Jack does like to sleep with Josie in her bed at times, but as to the big question of do they or don't they, we are simply teased along with a maybe and maybe not.

When Jack is 18, and Josie 16, he sets her up with the local pharmacist's son in an attempt to persuade him to steal drugs for them. The problem is that Jack becomes violently jealous when Josie develops a relationship with the young man. The two leave home and travel about and end up in New York city. Handsome Jack keeps the two alive by moving in with women who are attracted to him. The deal is, though, that Josie has to move in too.

Author Braffet is very effective in showing the inadequate socialization of these two. After all how do you adjust to society when your first contact with the outside world is in your late teens. How do Josie and Jack cope with the problem that they are totally in love with each other, and have become inseparable? The book proceeds ominously along, with the reader concerned that the two protagonists will not succeed. The story eventually arrives at an ending that is at once surprising and yet not surprising.

Readers looking for a story of "hot" incestual sex will not find it here. It is a fascinating tale of two people who have a warped, disadvantaged upbringing that ill equips them in their struggle for survival. I have never read a book quite like this one; it was an amazing read.

I just loved this book. This was an absolutely riveting story that I couldn't put down. The author's style was different from anything I've read but it was a well crafted book. I can't wait to read her latest novel. This is definitely worth the purchase price.