“Harrowing, heartbreaking, and sadly funny. Cherry is a terrific book, a cool book, and Walker’s voice is keen and vigilant and uniquely his own.”
NO MAJOR SPOILERS
This novel was written by the author while serving time in prison where he is expected to be released in 2020. The novel, told to us by an unnamed narrator is the story of a young man and his travels from high school to the army as a medic serving in Iraq, a heroin addict and a serial bank robber to help support his habit.
Throughout much of the book he is accompanied by a young lady named Emily, whom he meets as a teenager, falls in love with her, and after getting out of the service proceeds to join her in opiate hell throughout the rest of the book.
The novel is autobiographical, and is very explicit in describing sex, violence and the act of shooting up on heroin and the feelings one goes through upon getting high. The book gives us a tremendous insight into the thinking of an addict, from the pain of withdrawal to the desperate planning to score more drugs, and the people who surround them who help provide the drugs to them.
This book has generated enormous buzz in the industry and it lives up to its promise. However, the explicitness of the book might be hard for some readers to take so be forewarned. Otherwise, highly recommended.
Reviewed by:
Richard Franco
Added 3rd October 2018
