Customer Reviews

What Happened to Henry?

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This is an author who should be getting more attention. Her writing is lovely and her story equally so. From the first sentence you know you are in the hands of someone who can write and has a story to tell. It is a rare combination of talents. I loved these characters. They were beautiful and moving and REAL, and I missed them when the book was over. I can't wait for her next book.

This book is a beautifully written account of a family and the Japanese spirit that inhabits one of the children. While it might sound far-fetched, the presence of Asagao is perfectly natural and is essential. What Happened to Henry is a special combination of great writing, strong characters, and good dialogue. I was sorry to see it end and I look forward to Pywell's next novel.

This book is a fascinating novel that follows three siblings relationship through adulthood coping in a fairly positive way with a dysfunctional family life . The story is primarily seen through the middle child's eyes--a girl--a la Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird. But the story is filled with magical realism, and a secondary story about the bombing of Hiroshima on the individuals and its far reaching effect on the generation of the 1950's. There is more of a dark perspective about family, sibling relationships, and growing up in the guilty consciousness of the US culture of the 1950's than Lee's book has about its cultural conflict of racism. It is a compelling book, realistic, and doesn't dwell on the family environment looking for blame or restitution, but on the children making it through into adulthood as they survive all the adult responsibilities they shared as kids.

Sharon Pywell's beautifully crafted debut novel, "What Happened To Henry," chronicles the lives of the three extraordinary Cooper siblings from early childhood through adulthood in 1960's post WWII USA. The book's recurrent theme is the powerful, haunting memory of the devastation at Hiroshima, in the aftermath of the atomic-bomb drop of 1945 that brought immediate or horrifically lingering death to more than 140,000 people. The A-bomb, which the Japanese called "pika-don," did not simply kill, maim and injure masses of people and destroy buildings. It obliterated all the living and the community of the living. It devastated society and wrecked havoc on the environment. This year, 2005, is the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima's and Nagasaki's annihilation. The subject is introduced into the narrative in a subtle manner, and gives one pause to reflect on the impact the atomic bomb had, not only on Japanese and US children, but on children everywhere, who grew up in the days of the Cold War, with threats of nuclear missile attacks as a backdrop to their lives.

The Coopers are a middle class family of devout Catholics who live in a the suburban community of Eleusis, NY. It is 1960. Lauren, the middle child, is having a problem getting through First Communion. She is the only nine year-old in the class. A "First Communion failure," this is the third time she repeats the curriculum but will hopefully receive the sacrament soon, along with her seven year-old classmates. She had been foiled on her initial attempt by multiple streptococcus infections. Her fate was sealed on her second shot by a bowl of salted peanuts she found lying on the kitchen table. Lauren had a momentary lapse of memory about fasting before receiving the host. Her older brother Henry witnessed her downfall, so she couldn't lie. Thus, she continues to study catechisms with the stern, feisty, ever practical Sister Leonarda, hoping to succeed and get it over with. Lauren really struggles with the logic and veracity behind transubstantiation, martyrdom and heaven, especially when the sister makes pronouncements like, "Those who believe that they can evade judgment are generally struck down by trucks or disease before they can receive the sacrament of Extreme Unction." Lauren has good reason to question these beliefs, as the reader will discover.

Winston, the youngest Cooper is seven and a little hellion...or perhaps "tyrant" would be a more apropos description. When his wishes, which become his commands, are not fulfilled, or when his feelings are hurt, he dismantles everything in sight, and is quite effective in his destruction skills, being mechanically and electrically inclined. Winston compulsively takes the protective coverings off wall sockets and rewires everything. He is always absconding with his father's tools, like the hacksaw he smuggled into his bedroom to saw his bed's headboard in half. Annie Cooper, the children's mother, is distraught by her son's behavior and can never quite understand what possesses him. Warren Cooper, the family's father, an engineer working in the Research and Development department of a large defense corporation, admonishes his son for using a hacksaw to cut wood. He is upset that his son picked the wrong tool for the job. Lauren bitterly complains to older brother, Henry, that Winston gets away with murder.

Twelve year-old Henry is the family's pillar of strength and stability. Lauren adores him and depends on him emotionally for his wisdom, strength of character and level-headedness. She has a recurring nightmare in which she watches a man in a cornfield shoot Henry. The dream always ends with Lauren holding his body in her arms, thinking, "...I don't know the way." Even the inscrutable Winston responds to his big brother. Other than being kind, insightful and creative, Henry is a normal pre-adolescent boy, who is into building model fighter airplanes from WWII. His collection hangs in his room in simulated fight patterns. He is a bit obsessed, however, with looking at the photographs in a library book entitled, "Disaster, Disaster, Disaster," which graphically documents the horrors of the Hiroshima bomb! The picture he is most fascinated by is of a Japanese man with his arms outstretched, running toward a terribly burned woman - toward the blazing inferno caused by the bomb, not away from it.

In 1958, when the Cooper kids were ten, seven and five respectively, a terrible tragedy hit the family hard. By December, 1962, everyone had seemingly recovered from the emotional aftermath of the event which left them bereft. The Cooper method of getting their lives back on track is invariably the same - never discuss the problem, and repress, repress, repress. The three sibling, who were so looking forward to Christmas, have their holiday marred when Henry receives a powerful electric shock from an overheated record turntable and is rushed to the hospital. He sleeps for three days and awakens, seemingly none the worse for wear. Lauren learns differently, however, shortly after he returns home.

Henry is experiencing a bizarre phenomenon - he has access to the thoughts of Suriya Asagao, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing. Asagao died of leukemia several months afterwards, in 1946. Henry feels as if he is inside the man's head. Asagao, in fact, is not a man, but a spirit who wanders in the Void, in the Kingdom of the Dead. He suffers from the unbearable pain of loss. He searches continually for his beloved wife, Ishiru, the women he runs toward in the disaster book photograph. Asagao is unable to release himself from limbo until he lets go of Ishiru's memory. Meanwhile, Henry begins to speak Japanese, his syntax takes on foreign inflections, he acquires new knowledge about Japanese culture and Buddhism without studying these subjects, and is able to describe, in great detail, life in prewar Hiroshima.

The novel poignantly portrays the siblings banding together to protect Henry and Asagao, (who becomes like an invisible adopted brother to them), from being discovered. They know from prior experience that when they answer psychiatrists' questions truthfully, Henry is taken away to spend time in an institution and medicated until he can no longer think clearly. The reader follows the three Coopers through college, marriage and children in this extraordinary and most unusual tale.

Ms. Pywell's prose is extremely lyrical. This is truly a beautifully written novel. The author ably pulls off Henry and Asagao communing in the spirit world to such an extent that their relationship becomes more realistic than any diagnosis of pathological illness. The characters of the three siblings are exceptionally well drawn, and the emotional ties that bind them together are complex and moving. "Whatever Happened To Henry" is an absolutely compelling, life affirming book about family ties, love, faith, the enduring quality of history - and about a repertory dance company and beautiful Japanese religious ceremonies, both Buddhist and Shinto. There is also lots of humor here and I found myself laughing out loud. I also cried through a few pages.

Fellow avid readers, this should be at the top of your TBR list. A definite must read. You will thank me for the recommendation! ENJOY!
JANA

This is a story about fragmented people in fragmented relationships, in a fragmented world. A fanciful tale of the interplay between the the spirits of the living and the dead or a brilliant case study of group delusion?

Sharon Pywell has accomplished the impossible; she has written a book about transcendence that is poignant and often hilarious, open to all wounds yet filled with hope. She erects finite boundaries in order to trample them: images from Japan seep into a New York household, past oozes into present, death into life, insanity into revelation, infidelity into pure devotion. She rejects easy answers in favor of paradox, synthesis and higher truth.

Pywell's main character often feels the pull of opposite impulses, such as her bitter rivalry with one brother, her blind love for the other. Pywell has done a masterful job at describing the attraction of metaphysical questions, combined with doubt about the answers. I am so grateful for Pywell's humorous portrayal of young Lauren Cooper puzzling over the edicts of her catechism teacher, Sister Leonarda.

Pywell's prose is fresh and vivid as the latest gossip, so steeped in ambiguous detail that it could be poetry, albeit very fun and readable poetry. Her characters are so true and so vulnerable that you wish you could hug them; they tug at your feelings like old songs. Women hide behind crusty attitudes, plays for attention and acts of service; men find safety behind slide rules, testosterone and care-giving, and yet all seek redemption through love.

Indeed, this is one of the most searching explorations of the nature and power of love that I have ever read. _What happened to Henry?_ is a must-read for anyone who suspects that love and salvation are related, as well as for anyone who longs for a new voice on the literary scene.