Evan's Earthly Adventure
Mark Holofcener
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2003 Beyond Time Books
ISBN: 0971862613

A father's journal written after his beloved teenage son is killed by a DUI driver.

It's not how long-lived is your life as much as how much life you have lived, & in Mark Holofcener's Evan's Earthly Adventure, he has written of his son's fantastic 13 years of life.

The sudden, random death of a child is an agony only parents who have suffered it can know. Some are so wounded by the loss of this special part of themselves, that they mourn for the rest of their lives. Others, like Mark Holofcener, have taken a path to healing the horrible wound by writing it out. That's not to say that Mark Holofcener will ever “get over” it, as grieving parents will attest to. There are no “right” or “wrong” ways to mourning, no “right” length of time, no “wrong” feelings to despair, you can, however, learn to love being alive again.

Evan was a son upon whom the Sun shone brightly. He brought joy & comfort, excitement & company to his parents & his younger brother. & then one day he was gone, just like that, when no one was near him, on a harmless, sunny day while riding his mountain bike on the sidewalk of a country town in Massachusetts, killed by an out-of-control driver on prescription drugs.

Evan's Earthly Adventure is a father's record written with teenagers in mind, of both a son's life & his family's experience of living with his death. It is candid & poetic, rather like listening to a school band play a great love song, or a hymn. Full of energy, questions, raw notes with plaintive echoes of immense sorrow & gladness.

Pierced to his core with regrets & longings, Mark Holofcener comes to some kind of reckoning when confronting “...a great loss, that is when we are being tested the most. This isn't a drill. This isn't just a nightmare, this is a nightmare come true, and I am now faced with the questions, how do I want to spend the rest of my life? Will I be a victim, always feeling the numbing pain that will prevent me from living my life? Or, will I live the rest of my life to the best of my ability, in the spirit of my son Evan?” Page 18

& so we follow the days of mourning, the emails found & received; the gift of a video on which Evan is giving a speech; the self-abuse for not having recorded Evan's life more; the days of numbness; the hair-brained choices; the revelations; the pits of sorrow, & the aching.

I felt I got to know both Mark & Evan, & caught a glimpse of the presence of this young soul, & his affect on those who knew him. Mark Holofcener's journal took me through the Valley of Death with my eyes on a wider horizon. That it is written for teenagers makes both Evan's life & this father's efforts a guide into bereavement & survival which is, ultimately, a healing.

Evan's Earthly Adventure is a gripping & moving memoir, filled with anguish & admiration, pain & comfort. It offers no answers, only signposts to ways in which to honor the life of a beloved child, & make sense of why you're still alive. A testament to one person's life that all may read & learn from -- from grandparents to siblings.

Life-changing & highly recommended!

Do catch my Interview with Mark Holofcener & get to know this Author & Dad.
(02/22/04)

Rebecca