Haiku

by Andrew Vachss

Book Overview

From the author of the acclaimed Burke series: a searing novel that follows a band of homeless outcasts on a journey to recover what each has lost. Ho was a revered sensei, but when his dismissive... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307378497
• ISBN13: 9780307378491
• Release Date: November 2009
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 213 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Haiku in so many ways

"HAIKU" is a book that you can read and enjoy on many levels, much like a Haiku. It is no surprise that it's author is Andrew Vachss. The only way I would have been surprised is if the book hadn't been any of the aforementioned. Andrew Vachss is the purest kind of artist. He never claims to be an artist, but his work is irrefutable evidence to the contraire. Your Grishams and Browns dance around like prima donnas, but the only real person making all the right steps is the grandmaster Andrew Vachss.

Eliminate your preconceived notions

Years ago, I stopped reading reviews before reading books; too many gave up too much information. (That goes for newspaper reviewers and online reviewers alike.) A few years later, I stopped reading the hype copy the publisher includes on the cover, for much the same reason. (They almost never entice me to read a book; it's more like they're trying to condense the story into three paragraphs. If I wanted Cliffs Notes, I'd buy Cliffs Notes.) In fact, I read most of my books on Kindle now, so I don't even have a cover to read. Both of those things served me well with this book. I just started reading Vachss with his previous novel, the last in the Burke series, and I started going back through from the beginning. I've got a ways to go, but ... why is anyone comparing this to those Burke novels? Because it's New York? I don't see the connection. Ho isn't Burke, and he sure isn't Max or Mama (if you're figuring race). This book isn't about predators, and so far as I've read, that's what the Burke novels are about. I think the author would have benefited from a pseudonym for this book. You get so many under your belt that are a certain style, it's hard for people to walk in with an open mind. That's what this book requires; a blank slate. It's a very different story, with a different purpose. And it's great. So get to reading it. And forget that you know anything about the author's previous books. I wish now I hadn't been given a copy of Another Life. That's the only thing that could have made this book better, if it had been the first I read by him.

worthy of the title

Some of the people who have commented on this book clearly don't get it. If you were expecting a re-hash of the Burke novels, you don't really know Vachss. He's a real writer. In other words, he's not just pounding out pulp novels simply to keep the publishers and the people who want another Burke story happy or to keep his wallet fat. He's constantly perfecting his art, and evolving as both a warrior against child abuse and as a writer. Even at this stage in his career, he's not simply resting on his laurels. I loved the Burke novels, but Burke's story, if it believably follows the natural course of the characters' lives, has run its course. Haiku represents not just a new voice, but a new level of Vachss's writing. And, after reading it, I am highly charged by it. The voice Vachss speaks through in Ho is very different from Burke's, but it is equally well-crafted, authentic, gripping, and believable. This story is as exciting, entertaining, gripping, frightening, and deep as anything that Vachss has ever written. But it is also, in some ways, more powerful -- at least to me. I say that because of the personal connection I made with this book on the first page. The main character is a warrior. Honor is everything to him. But as the book progresses, he also reveals himself to be an amazing therapist, seeking to fulfill his need to live, and ultimately die, honorably by helping others to empower themselves against their overwhelming demons and discover lives worth living. And the "supporting" characters that Ho is helping to transform in their own journeys are each as unique, engaging, well-formed, and fascinating as Ho. As a former Army Ranger and a child therapist, such a book comes with high expectations and hopes. Haiku has met them in spades. This is an immensely inspiring book to me, and renews my love of writing not just as entertainment, but as teaching, and as spiritual food. It inspires me to become both a better therapist and live up to the warrior ideal. And I believe it is exactly Vachss's mission to express the spiritual connection between those concepts in this story. Ho is the perfect voice for this message, as his life story is the living embodiment of that message. Burke transmitting this message would have rung false. Burke is neither a warrior nor a therapist. He's a criminal. In Haiku, Vachss continues to demonstrate his mastery of the art of writing, his dedication to telling truths that most people never see (but need to), and his knowledge of that about which he writes. As with all true masters, Vachss never stops striving for perfection. Look forward to his next one.

Read it twice

I started reading this book looking for a replacement to Vachss's Burke series. A little more than midway through, something happens to one of the characters (and I'll leave that to you to find) that signaled this was something different. I finished the book, wasn't completely satisfied, started again. And the second time through, it was a different experience than the Burke books--and an experience worth having.

Redemption songs

This is a book about redemption. The narrator, "Ho" (not the name he was born with), once a successful and respected sensei, left everything behind and hit the streets after the death of a favored student forced his gaze starkly inward. Seeing his own faults and flaws writ large, and ashamed that he'd overlooked them at the time when it would have mattered, Ho sentences himself to atonement -- at the book's beginning, he's not yet aspiring to redemption, believing it's too late for that. Living like a monk isn't so much a conscious spiritual choice as a return to old habits for Ho, who spent much of his early life in a temple in Japan, in the years leading up to WWII. That's where he learned the scriptures, as well as the realities of monastic existence -- sometimes the fine words mean something important, and other times they're simply pretty cloaks to cover ugly reality. For it to mean anything ultimately, one must *be* the Sutra. It's not a world most of us are familiar with, and Ho's memories of childhood and adolescence fascinate, serving as an exotic veneer over such recurrent Vachss themes as family and kinship. Ho's path to redemption starts when he finds himself part of a clan of sorts, a group of homeless American men with their own stories, their own mistakes and failures and kicks when they were down. As with all Vachss novels, these side characters are fleshed out and realistic, and their various journeys to the place they're at today are all (too) believable. As Ho gets to know these men's hearts and minds, he sees more than their knocks and failures, he sees their hopes and aspirations as well, and that's when his own path switches from mere atonement to true redemption. Not only Ho, but each of the book's characters, is seeking redemption of his own. Each of them finds it, in his way, by the book's conclusion. A happy ending? In a way, though a bittersweet one. It has to be bittersweet, being a book about redemption.