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Summary
Summary
The New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook offers a timely novel featuring his most fascinating character yet, a Vietnam vet embarking on a quixotic crusade to track down his nemesis from the war.
After sixty-eight-year-old David Granger crashes his BMW, medical tests reveal a brain tumor that he readily attributes to his wartime Agent Orange exposure. He wakes up from surgery repeating a name no one in his civilian life has ever heard--that of a Native American soldier whom he was once ordered to discipline. David decides to return something precious he long ago stole from the man he now calls Clayton Fire Bear. It may be the only way to find closure in a world increasingly at odds with the one he served to protect. It may also help him to finally recover from his wife's untimely demise.
As David confronts his past to salvage his present, a poignant portrait emerges: that of an opinionated and good-hearted American patriot fighting like hell to stay true to his red, white, and blue heart, even as the country he loves rapidly changes in ways he doesn't always like or understand. Hanging in the balance are Granger's distant art-dealing son, Hank; his adoring seven-year-old granddaughter, Ella; and his best friend, Sue, a Vietnamese American who respects David's fearless sincerity.
Through the controversial, wrenching, and wildly honest David Granger, Matthew Quick offers a no-nonsense but ultimately hopeful view of America's polarized psyche. By turns irascible and hilarious, insightful and inconvenient, David is a complex, wounded, honorable, and loving man. The Reason You're Alive examines how the secrets and debts we carry from our past define us; it also challenges us to look beyond our own prejudices and search for the good in us all.
Author Notes
Matthew Quick graduated with a double-majored in English and secondary education from La Salle University in 1996. He taught literature and film at Haddonfield Memorial High School in New Jersey for several years, before leaving in 2004 to become a fiction writer. He received his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Goddard College in 2007. He writes for young adults and adults. His young adult books include Sorta Like a Rock Star, Boy21, and Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock. His adult books include The Silver Linings Playbook, which was made into an Oscar-winning film, and The Good Luck of Right Now.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Meet David Granger, the bigoted 68-year-old Vietnam veteran and narrator of Quick's (The Silver Linings Playbook) dark, funny, and surprisingly tender new novel. After a brain tumor is removed, Granger allows some unknown government lackey to transcribe his life story: a patriotic, often cynical, sometimes paranoid, but always engaging recitation. He shares the horrors of Vietnam and his encounter with Clayton Fire Bear, the fake name of a Native American to whom he owes an apology. He describes his family relationships: his love for his granddaughter; his semi-estrangement with Hank, his pretentious son; and his tragic marriage to Hank's mother, Jessica, which began as an effort to save her life after being raped and impregnated and ended years later with her suicide. Granger's life is rife with instances that either prove or belie his reputation as a xenophobic, racist homophobe. Identifying the "you" in the title proves illuminating; is it Clayton Fire Bear, Hank-who until now was ignorant about his paternity-or Granger himself, who tried and failed to keep Jessica's demons at bay and too late realized she returned the favor with more subtlety and success? (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A veteran tries to come to terms with the traumatic experiences he had a generation earlier in Vietnam.At the core of the novel is the voice of David Granger, a combination of Archie Bunker and Marlow of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. When the novel opens, Granger is 68, and he's still haunted by his experiences in Vietnam. There, he'd witnessed darkness and violence on an unimaginable scale and was complicit in that violence. His postwar life included "some crazy time in a military loony bin in Kansas," and every day he still dresses top to toe in camouflage and carries a sidearm in an ankle holster. His wife now dead, Granger contemptuously patronizes his son, Hank, an art dealer. (His wife, an artist, had named their son Henri Rousseau Granger, but David can't stomach the effete name.) David is casual and defensive about his prejudices, and he both recognizes and denies these prejudices in equal measure. But the narrator is not wholly unsympathetiche had obviously deeply loved his wife, and he dotes on his 7-year-old granddaughter, Ella. After a terrible car crash that leads to the discovery of a brain tumor David attributes to his long-ago exposure to Agent Orange, he decides to "right a wrong" he committed during the war. He stole a knife from Clayton Fire Bear, a Native American who collected scalps as part of his own traumatic war experience. With the help of a buddy of his from his Vietnam days, Granger goes on a quest to find the elusive Fire Bear. The final reunion with Fire Bear, now a lawyer, is far more surprising than what Granger had expected or imagined. A valuable addition to fiction about the tangled aftereffects of Vietnam on soldiers in the field. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* You wouldn't think an ankle-holstering, Marlboro-smoking, card-carrying Republican could be vulnerable, but you don't know David Granger. A Vietnam veteran convinced that his brain tumor was caused by Agent Orange, David agrees to present his life's story in order to hold Uncle Sam accountable for his war injuries and to guide fellow veterans. David's brain injuries make him the definition of an unreliable narrator, and he often interrupts his own story with asides, foreshadowing, and deflection. His quest to return a war souvenir to its rightful owner is quixotic in the truest sense of the word, as his plans become derailed and reformed with each new twist. David's anxiety and braggadocio continually crash into each other to form one of the most frustrating, yet appealing, narrators in recent memory, contradictory to his core. Those familiar with author Quick will recognize elements of the complex and unflinchingly honest protagonist that appeared in The Silver Linings Playbook (2008), and fans of Matthew Norman and Greg Olear will enjoy David's introspection and self-preservation. Quick's prose is sharp and cutting, perfectly suited to David's brash persona. The Reason You're Alive is a compact powerhouse of a novel. Though brief, it's subversive, unexpected, and utterly compelling.--Turza, Stephanie Copyright 2017 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Vietnam War veteran David Granger is taken to the hospital after he wraps his BMW around a tree. Medical tests reveal David had a brain tumor that he blames on the U.S. government for exposing him to Agent Orange during the war. As he recovers from brain surgery, he repeats the name of a Native American soldier he served with, Clayton Fire Bear, whom David had disciplined harshly. After being discharged from the hospital, David is helped by best friend Sue, a Vietnamese America woman, to reconnect with his distant son, Hank, and his seven-year-old granddaughter, Ella. As he finds peace with his family-even moving in with them-the aging vet also seeks to make amends with Clayton Fire Bear by returning a stolen ceremonial knife that he had given to his now-deceased wife. -VERDICT Quick (Boy 21; Silver Linings Playbook) delivers an exceptional novel; its themes of war and memory as well as its unforgettable characters, especially the ornery David, fast pace, and insightful dialog will connect with readers of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. [See Prepub Alert, 1/23/17; library marketing.]-Russell -Michalak, Goldey-Beacom Coll. Lib., Wilmington, DE © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
