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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781569474983
ISBN: 1569474982
Label: Soho Press
Manufacturer: Soho Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: May 01, 2008
Publisher: Soho Press
Sales Rank: 63919
Studio: Soho Press
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
'Funny, bewitching, observant.'-The Oregonian
'Hits all the frets of a powerful story: sharp-witted dialogue, vivid characters, insight into medical challenges and prose that snaps like well-placed plucks of guitar strings. . . . I hold up my lighter and turn it full-flame for [Garth] Stein's latest work. Encore!'-The Seattle Times
'Compelling.'-Seattle Post-Intelligencer
'Stein handles the many narrative elements deftly.'-Seattle Weekly
'An engrossing family drama.'-Publishers Weekly
Evan had a hit single, but that was ten years ago. Thirty-one now, he's drifting, playing in a local band and teaching middle-aged men to coax music from an electric guitar.
Beset at a young age with a life-threatening form of epilepsy, he's kept his condition a secret. But his deepest secret is that he got his high school sweetheart pregnant. Then her conservative parents whisked her out of Seattle and out of Evan's life.
Now, fourteen years later, he experiences unplanned parenthood when he undertakes to raise the resentful teenage son he's never known.
Off beat and disarming, How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets portrays a contemporary American family with unfailing honesty.
Garth Stein, a former documentary filmmaker, was co-producer of an Academy Award-winning short film. How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets is his second novel; his first, Raven Stole the Moon, was published by Pocket Books. His third novel, The Art of Racing in the Rain, will be published by HarperCollins in 2008 and is being translated around the world. He lives in Seattle with his wife and children.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A bit unbelievable...
I bought this book because I absolutely fell in love with The Art of Racing in the Rain. 'Racing' was one of the best books I have read in a long time. Perhaps I had too high of hopes for this book, because I ended up quite disappointed.
I found that much of the book was unbelievable, and not in a good way. Without ruining the book for those who wish to read it; you find out right away that Evan, the main character has a 14 year old son he has never spoken to. The day he meets his son the grandmother runs out and tells Evan to take the child for a few days because her husband is abusive. To me this is very strange...granted it is fiction, but it is a bit too far fetched for me. There are other instances in the book where conversations are had that are just too strange for me to ignore. They just don't seem to fit.
That being said, I think that Stein did a good job of showing how an epileptic may feel afraid of people knowing about their condition. To me, the book was just okay; it isn't something I would recommend nor something I would read again.
Rating: - Understanding the Truth
I read this earlier novel after finishing Garth Stein's" The Art of Racing in the Rain." I find the two novels to be very different yet still sharing wonderful similarities. Two character-driven tales conceived and penned by the same sensitive hand.
"How Evan Broke his Head and other secrets" is the story of Evan Wallace, 31-years old, a brilliant rock guitarist and musician living alone in his late grandfather's small apartment (with a terrific view). Evan is the son of a prominent Seattle heart surgeon and his obedient wife, and is the older brother to Charlie, a seemingly over-achieving attorney on the partner track. Evan is damaged - he has suffered from epilepsy since age 12 when, on a dare, he ran in front of a car, was struck and nearly killed. Evan's epilepsy -- its cause and its symptoms -- is a major aspect of Evan's character. I am very affected by its full burden here and the steady courage Mr. Stein has discovered in Evan, the hero of this story.
In this novel, Evan discovers friends, family, love and opportunity hovering just out of reach. He finds a 14 year old son lost to him shortly after birth and chooses to embrace and care about the absent boy. He finds a woman who sees his worth and confronts him with it. Great responsibilities accompany parenthood; fear and confusion precede commitment; forgiveness accompanies a life that is not solitary. Evan faces his terrible secrets and must choose to understand and reveal them lest he leave them only ... Read More
Rating: - Where have you been all my life???
This novel is a brilliant and beautifully written meditation on the ever shifting nature of the truth. It is also an excellent portrayal of how Evan, the "black sheep" of his family, learns to take charge of his own story and stop letting others dictate it for him. Yes, he is a flawed character. He has secrets that he has kept from his family because he was too ashamed to reveal them. He has a 14 year old son he has never met, and he is an extremely talented musician who isn't getting anywhere with his music. And he has epilepsy.
The journey we take with Evan as he learns to grow up and become a father is immensely satisfying. The details, especially regarding the emotional lives of the characters, are beautifully described.
You have to be smart about reading this, though. While it is written in the third person, it is not an omniscient narrator. It is a very tight third person where everything is really coming straight from Evan's P.O.V. It is as close to being written in the first person as you can get while still being a third person narrative. I found this fascinating! And I loved the tone it set for the book. So if you find yourself complaining that Mica, for example, is too good to be true, you are not reading carefully! Of course she is too good to be true--everything we learn about her we learn from Evan, and he's fallen completely in love with her.
I honestly don't understand how more people haven't found their way to this book. How Evan ... Read More
Rating: - Great book.
I really enjoyed reading this. It flowed really nice and I kept wanting more. I finished without ever getting bored.
Rating: - Surprising
The story about a young man dealing with becoming a father was good, but what blew me away was the incredible depiction of the life of a person with a minimal handicap. His epilepsy doesn't show immediately to others, but it haunts every moment of his life. He has completely educated himself to limit the disease as much as it can be limited and if he is control of his life he controls the disease. But none of us can control our lives and the conflict of this book seems to be, can he be heroic enough to risk imbalance and save his son? Can he take the steps to make others in his life recognize that he can handle the handicap and run his own life? I thought there were a couple of other issues - people testing your love by pulling away and how we manipulate our life stories to fit the truths we can handle about ourselves that resonated with truth. There seemed to be a great honesty in this book and I was deeply impressed.
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