WebKittyn Warbles

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Andrew Vachss

I'm working in reverse this hour, this one has the substance.

I spoke of Michael Connelly a few hours back, now I want to touch on another writer I am a devoted fan of.

Andrew Vachss.

I discovered Vachss a few years back when as an adult I got the chicken pox. I could hardly do anything but read and my dad gave me a paperback of Sacrifice, he thought I would like it. As sick as I was, I read that book in three days and then read it again.

Andrew Vachss is not your typical writer and his stories are not typical stories. He goes into some seriously dark places and he does it because he knows the world he writes of. His stories are of children raped and abused, of incest survivors and battered children, of once thrown away people coming together, of the power of dogs, of the true horrors the human mind is capable of. His books are brutal and often disturbing and not for everyone.

He writes these things because this is what he's lived. He is currently a child's lawyer, he doesn't work for the parents of the child - he is exlusively there for the child. He has supervised juvenile prison wards and worked with children for forty years. He has seen and heard it all and though it may disturb you, you will not walk away from a Vachss book without being deeply affected.

His main character, Burke, is the sort of man we all wish at some point we could be with the group of loyal friends we all wish we had. There's a little Burke in most decent folk, only we don't get to act on it most of the time.

His website is well worth visiting, it has links and resources and excerpts of his books and non-fiction writing. There are pictures of the pitbulls and other dogs named in the books, it's an extremely well done site for a brilliant man.