Great plot lost to an unexpected theme
The plot of this book is a great idea: A young man kidnaps several persons who played a role in his upbringing, his mother, a teacher, a congressman, a policeman, an astronaut, and forces them to answer those questions he always wanted to be answered.
Don’t we all want to have answers from certain persons from our past? Why did they act like they acted? What did they really think? Our parents, teachers, etc.?
This book could have been a great story, if it concentrated on the big questions in the heart of everybody.
The problem is: The book is not about these big questions, and the young kidnapper is not everybody. The book is about fatherless young men. Partly non-white. And their problems. And troubles with the police which makes use of guns far to quickly. And drug-addicted mothers. This is interesting, too, but it disappoints the expectation.
Therefore the title: „Your fathers where are they?“ And the young man killed by the police far too quickly considered himself to be a prophet, therefore the title „and the prophets, do they live forever?“ First you think, these are some of the questions the young kidnapper will ask his victims, yet these questions never appear in all the book.
The dialogue as literary form is well-applied in this book, this made it worth reading, too.
Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen.
(Erstveröffentlichung auf Amazon am 15. August 2015)