How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets

March 28, 2005
Stein (Raven Stole the Moon
) builds an engrossing family drama around a Seattle rock musician. Evan's the odd man out in the Wallace family: his dad's a renowned heart surgeon, his mom's the dutiful doctor's wife and his brother's a successful lawyer. His entire life, they've treated Evan like damaged goods, and in some ways he is. Hit by a car as a child, Evan now has frequent and sometimes severe epileptic seizures. And although he once had a top-10 hit, these days Evan gets by working as a guitar shop salesman. Stein ups the emotional ante of the Wallace world by dropping a 14-year-old son, Dean, in Evan's lap when the boy's mother, Evan's high school flame, is killed in an auto accident. Long denied a chance to be involved in Dean's raising, Evan is excited to be a dad, but it isn't easy—there's that exchange when Dean smacks Evan and Evan calls him a "rude little shit," for example. It's as if Stein has taken his hero, set a series of nasty psychological and medical roadblocks in his path, and then stepped back to see if Evan can find his way toward health and happiness. Following the emotionally stunted Evan along his arduous journey isn't always a pleasant experience, but the path is littered with life lessons that Stein weaves into the narrative with honesty and compassion.

March 15, 2005
Stein is clearly aiming for Nick Hornby territory in this novel about thirtysomething musician Evan, who is suddenly required to parent Dean, the teenage son he's never even met, when Dean's mom is killed in an accident. Evan, who suffers from epilepsy, is the lead guitar player in a promising Seattle rock band. As he struggles to integrate his son into his routine, he must also wrestle with unresolved issues, including his fractious relationship with his parents and with his straight-arrrow brother and the feeble way he dealt with his pregnant girlfriend in high school. Dean, still grief stricken and unsure of his fledgling relationship with Evan, starts to act out, and Evan must decide whether he has what it takes to be a father. In his second novel, following " Raven Stole the Moon" (1998), Stein struggles mightily to capture the commitment issues that Hornby incorporates so naturally. Despite many awkward passages, he does manage to hit a few grace notes when describing the music scene in Seattle and Evan's complicated attitude toward his epilepsy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)