Full disclosure: The author sent me an email requesting a review. I purchased the book rather than be indebted to him for a free copy so this review is as objective as I can make it.
Short review: It's a good book. It's short, set with large type, is easy and quick to read. Author's prose overuses similes but after a while you stop noticing them. It may be autobiographical to some extent and I am not one to disparage another person's life journey, so I would only say that this is a very believable story which has points of contact with the despair so readily seen in modern society. The main character's descent into hell and his "salvation" from it has many parallels among people I have known. The book never rises (intentionally, I imagine) above the level of commentary. It offers no solutions and posits no explanations for the way things are. If the main point is that we are to "get educated", this book only offers anecdotes about what's involved in doing so. But, it is worth the read.
Longer review: Sheldon's work fits into the same genre as Camus' "The Stranger", Gaarder's "Sophie's World", and Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." It is in that genre, but it is not in the same league as those works. The question of "person-hood" as related to "authenticity" is a perennial human dilemma. Sheldon's character feels the weight of imposed social "expectations" on him. He is caught between wanting to "be" the person his teachers, his parents, his bosses desire and reward, and "being" that person, whoever it is, that is truly him.
Sheldon falls short in one critical area. His universal opinion is that the character shaping nature of social structures is oppressive and tyrannical. He reverts back to the 60's hippie culture and rails against "the man." OK... social structures do act in such a way as to reward conformity and punish non-conformity to social norms. That is inherent in the idea of human social structures period. Some societies may be more tyrannical than others... some may be so loose as to appear chaotic... but, when it comes right down to it, whether it is a free-floating hippie commune or a fascist state, there are acceptable norms for maintaining community in each. Violations of those norms have consequences. I think Sheldon's character, at the end, where he is living in acceptable solitude but yet "missing" the society of people, begins to recognize this.
The Greeks called it "paideia" and it was the purpose of education. A young person was supposed to be "shaped", both morally, intellectually and spiritually toward the goal of an ideal citizen in the city-state. Society, civilization itself, is dependent on this process. It cannot be abandoned if society is to be maintained. If a community is so open that every individual listened to the "little voice" inside of them and acted as that impulsive voice exhorted them to do, then there would be blood on the streets as well as frenetic bonding in impulsive movements that has more in common with lemmings rushing toward a cliff than true human freedom. Sheldon's character gives us a taste of this when he joins the radical revolution and finds himself destroying property leading to a few days behind bars. The difference between freedom and liberty is the difference between desire and acceptability. What Sheldon needs to address is to what degree is civilization the pathway by which man becomes "noble" while at the same time that pathway by which man is denied his individuality and rendered "faceless." Sheldon focuses only on that "negative" force (which is always present in any social structure) and never awakens his character to the possibility of the other end of the spectrum.
It is too easy, as I see in so many young rebels, to reject all restraint and coercion in the mistaken belief that some "Walden Pond-ish", get back to nature, become one with the universe dynamic, will smooth away all our chains and with the sounding chorus of "Alle Menschen" ringing in our ears we can skip and jump and sing with the birds in blissful harmony and with all creation and with each other. It works for individuals... it doesn't work for a social order. The American journey is replete with Mountain Men and Traders and Hermits, fleeing to the wilderness, living in splendid seclusion and a fierce, suspicious rejection of strangers and community. Their life stories are mirrors of Sheldon's character. But, and this important to note, the Native Americans who lived in that same natural setting, lived violent lives filled with wars on other tribes and predatory claims on food and property. Getting back to nature and living in the freedom to do whatever you want to do whenever you desire to do it, works OK in solitary.... once you add another human to the mix... well, it's right back to that whole "rules" thing. Yew Shodkin (Sheldon's character), if this is a primarily fiction work, could have achieved true freedom if he had been allowed to discover, that the highest freedom that man can gain, is that in which he voluntarily and willing lays down his life (including lesser freedoms) for another... or for others. True freedom is to embrace restrictions on ourselves.
Still... criticism aside... it's a good book. Take up and read.
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From the Publisher
THE CANARY
"Sheldon's style is warm, almost whimsical at times, and this means that even the most politically uninitiated reader will understand what he's trying to say... If the book was marked by the education system Sheldon is rebelling against, it would be an 'A*. Top notch'."
THE HUFFINGTON POST
"It inspires hope and fear, optimism and depression. Then it analyses those emotions. It explains the pressures we all experience from time to time... It's probably the most thought-provoking novel of 2016."
BUZZFEED
"The Little Voice takes the world we live in, the world we take for granted, and makes us think about it in a whole new way... It makes the reader ask themselves all the questions they've been bottling up and avoiding. And that, in itself, is a pretty remarkable feat."
GLOBAL EDUCATION NETWORK
"At times, it will make you feel uncomfortable. It's certainly not "pop-lit". But it is magnificent. It is a compelling rhapsody of rhyme and reason."
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Kelly
Definitely worth a read: WARNING, one spoiler below.
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Thought provoking, opens up your mind and thinking.
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