My Goodreads and Amazon review of Ashes, Ashes by Fred Soukup (Rated 5) – Above the Smoldering Remains. It’s difficult for a writer to make readers care about characters whose lives are far from enviable — people who, while trying to befriend others, become their own worst enemies. Yet that is the challenge Fred Soukup sets for himself in Ashes, Ashes, and brilliantly achieves. As if surmounting that hurdle wasn’t high enough, he’s wraps his portrayal in a Rashomon-like murder mystery. The story is told from multiple points of view, each with a distinctive voice. It damns the foster care system and the callous society that looks the other way as its victims land on the trash heap. As a novelist myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire Soukup’s ability to elicit compassion for unlikable characters who seek salvation but will settle for a salvage operation. This is a bleak book and yet, because the protagonists don’t give up on themselves, readers can’t give up hoping for them. Soukup’s creations cling to life, determined to realize dreams and find redemption. They may differ from us on the surface, but underneath their scars, these throwaways embody a deep and abiding humanity. Soukup reveals the dark underbelly of the nursery rhyme we all learned as children, most of us unaware that it refers to a deadly plague. We’re not innocent children, but Ashes, Ashes challenges readers to rise above the smoldering remains.
Elicits compassion for unlikeable characters
Why writers read: “We ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? – Franz Kafka
