A Boy Made of Blocks by Keith Stuart
Published: December 29th 2016
Publisher: Sphere
Pages: 387
Available in Hardback, Paperback and on Kindle
Rating:5/5
Blurb
MEET THIRTY SOMETHING DAD, ALEX… He loves his wife Jody, but has forgotten how to show it. He loves his son Sam, but doesn't understand him. Something has to change. And he needs to start with himself.
MEET EIGHT-YEAR-OLD SAM… To him the world is a puzzle he can't solve on his own.
When Sam starts to play Minecraft, it opens up a place where Alex and Sam begin to rediscover both themselves and each other… When life starts to tear one family apart, can they put themselves back together, one piece at a time?
Review
A Boy Made of Blocks by Keith Stuart is an incredibly
uplifting novel about learning to see the world around us from a different
perspective. It’s a novel which will make you laugh and cry and embrace life in
any way you can.
Alex and Jody have an
eight year old son Sam who has recently being diagnosed as autistic. It has
been an uphill battle to get this diagnosis and after have caused a strain
between Jody and Alex. Alex unable to deal with his son’s random outbursts has
hidden himself away using his job as an excuse. Left on her own to try and
support Sam as best she can Jody has finally had enough and told Alex he has to
leave.
Alex heads to best friend Dan’s house, who without question
lets him in and allows Alex to wallow in his own selfish self-pity. It isn’t
until Alex loses his job that he finally begins to realise he has to change and
has to find a way to connect with Sam. Surprisingly this connection comes in
the form of the game Minecraft. As Sam begins to play the game, he finds a
world he can relate to and when Alex joins him playing he begins to communicate
and form a bond with his son.
As Alex begins to understand more how his son sees the world
the also begins to see his own life differently and slowly Alex begins to find
his own place in the world that he has been searching for, for almost twenty
years.
Alex was not a character I warmed to initially. He seemed
quite selfish, if he didn’t want to deal with something he just walked away and
let others get on with it, blaming the fact he didn’t understand autism as a
get out cause. He seemed like he was lost in his own world, reliving the past
over and over and he needed to find something to connect himself to the present
and to his family. It wasn’t until a third of the way through the book where
Alex becomes more aware of other people’s needs and then as he began to see
things more from Sam’s point of view he became quite a nice guy.
A Boy Made of Blocks is a story of family trying to put themselves
back together after a breakdown, rather like the Minecraft game, slowly piece
by piece they begin to connect together again. It’s a story of learning to
trust, to trust each other, to follow our instincts and trust that everything
will turn out okay in the end. Most of all it’s a book about accepting who we
are and celebrating each and every milestone and achievement no matter how
small or difficult, because after all like the book says “Life’s an adventure,
not a walk – that’s why it’s difficult”.
Keith Stuart has written an engaging and heartfelt novel
which I enjoyed very much. He has truly captured the relationship between Alex
and Sam and it was a pleasure to follow along on their journey of
self-discovery.
Thank you to Sphere for inviting me on the blog tour and providing me with a review copy.
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