Me and Kev - Hardcover

Black, Simon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1880909081 ISBN 13: 9781880909089

Publisher: Baskerville Pub, 1993

Synopsis

After a severe beating, young Steven Jones dies to his parents but continues to live as the playmate of an imaginary companion he has discovered inside himself called Kev. Kev helps Steven over some adolescent rough spots, then deserts him for a biker girl for whom Kev is also real.

About this title

From Library Journal:

After a severe beating by his father, eight-year-old Steven Jones retreats into a fantasy world and becomes father to Kevin, a tiny boy in his head. Steven invents a series of stories for Kevin to explain both his anger toward his abusive parents and his inability to leave them. For the next 12 years, Kevin remains his constant companion as he treads a borderland between sanity and self-destruction, surviving suicide attempts and institutionalization. A chance encounter with the equally abused Clara creates new ripples of confusion; she takes over Kevin until her suicide, leaving Steven to continue the grim struggle between his fantasy and the pain of reality. The bitter tone of this first novel will strike some readers as compelling, others as merely self-indulgent. For comprehensive collections.
- Jan Blodgett, St. Mary's Cty. Records Ctr. & Archives, Leonardtown, Md.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Black uses the story-within-a-story motif to expose the essential fragility of the human psyche. When Steven Jones, a young boy physically and emotionally abused by his alcoholic father, his timid mother, and his cruel classmates, retreats from the bitter reality of his everyday existence, he creates an elaborate internal universe in which he becomes both the father and the protector of Kevin, his own inner child. As Steven delves more deeply into the realm of escape and illusion, he becomes unable to distinguish between the actual and the fantastic. The parallel narratives eventually merge, providing a disturbingly intimate view of a relentless and irretrievable descent into schizophrenia. A chilling psychological profile of a dysfunctional adolescent. Margaret Flanagan

About this edition

• Publisher: Baskerville Pub
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 1880909081
• ISBN 13: 9781880909089
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 263