Nothing could make the obsequious spectacle earlier this month in Alaska more shocking, but while President Donald Trump was waiting on the red carpet, clapping for an international killer, I was reading a book about the destruction of one humble family in Ukraine. For a moment, that clash between private sympathy and public sycophancy cast the world in a light almost too harsh to endure.<\/p>\n
With \u201cThe Sunflower Boys,\u201d Sam Wachman, a writer all of 25 years old, has created that rarest phenomenon: a war novel that feels at once timeless and precisely of the moment. Inspired in part by stories he heard while volunteering at a camp for Ukrainian children in Romania, Wachman\u2019s book contains no trumpet blast of military strategy, no parchment of international politics. Instead, in these pages, we confront the horrors that Vladimir Putin unleashed as they\u2019re experienced by a frightened 12-year-old boy named Artem. His narration is more revealing about the costs of this brutal invasion than any numbing tally of casualties could ever be.<\/p>\n
A bloody fissure in recent history accounts for the cleft structure of \u201cThe Sunflower Boys.\u201d Throughout the long opening section, Artem describes the simple joys and anxieties of his life in Chernihiv, a city in northern Ukraine that will feel surprisingly foreign and familiar to American readers. With big-sibling equanimity, Artem tolerates the demands of his 8-year-old brother, Yuri. He misses their Tato (father), who has been working in the United States for so long that he can barely remember the man, but he adores the art supplies sent from abroad. And he tries, most days, to stay on the right side of his hilariously stern seventh-grade teacher.<\/p>\n
Boyhood \u2013 not recollected in tranquility but lived in the present tense \u2013 is a delicate tone to get right in a coming-of-age novel. Sentimental cloyingness and knowing irony are constant dangers for any writer rafting down this river. But Wachman navigates with exceptional skill. Just on the cusp of his teenage years, Artem is a kid with a heart full to bursting. He speaks with a naturally poetic voice that\u2019s a lustrous amalgam of sweetness and urgency.<\/p>\n
We see that especially in the way the boy\u2019s concerns slip along the sweaty rope of adolescence. New medication easily controls Artem\u2019s periodic seizures, but he\u2019s more concerned about controlling his attraction to a dashing boy at school. He\u2019s innocent enough to draw pictures of his friend but self-conscious enough to know there\u2019s something dangerous about those skillful images. Classmates have started teasing him with homophobic asides, and his mother\u2019s no help when she predicts, \u201cSoon you\u2019ll start bringing girls home.\u201d<\/p>\n
With no gay role models and no one to talk with, Artem prays to be delivered from these longings. In lonely despair, he blames his father for neglecting him. \u201cIf Tato had been here,\u201d Artem thinks, \u201che would have taught me the right way to be a man while I was still a boy, before it was too late.\u201d<\/p>\n
But events are about to teach Artem that being a man has nothing to do with whom he loves, only how bravely he behaves.<\/p>\n
Early in the morning on the 24th of February \u2013 a month that means \u201ccruel\u201d in Ukrainian \u2013 Artem wakes to thunder. Then the chirps of car alarms in the distance. \u201cThe teakettle shrieks again, closer this time,\u201d Artem says. \u201cThere are two more explosions. The first one shakes the floor. When the second comes, our bedroom window shatters. Glass sprays across our bedroom. Yuri screams.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just as quickly as Chernihiv changed in 2022, so \u201cThe Sunflower Boys\u201d breaks from domestic life to violent terror. \u201cThere was no time to get dressed,\u201d Artem says, \u201cbut I\u2019m too frightened to be embarrassed about our neighbors seeing me in my underwear.\u201d During an unspeakable scene of atrocity repeated far too many times in Ukraine, Artem and his little brother are suddenly separated from their family. Home is no longer an option \u2013 no longer a home. \u201cWe would stay there and starve,\u201d Artem concludes, \u201ctrapped in our grief, stranded in the past like whales beaching themselves to feel the warmth of the sun.\u201d With no one to guide them, these two young brothers must try to make their way to safety across a deadly hellscape.<\/p>\n
From February to April of that year, Putin destroyed about 70% of Chernihiv. This is Cormac McCarthy\u2019s \u201cThe Road\u201d not as apocalyptic dystopia but as historical realism. Artem struggles to protect his little brother from bullets, missiles and sights he can never unsee. When Yuri is too weak, Artem carries him. \u201cEverything around us is a potential bomb,\u201d he says. \u201cHow little I know about this new world.\u201d Haunted by the prospect of letting his absent father down, he strains to find food and shelter \u2013 strains even to find the words for what they\u2019re enduring. \u201cThe wail presses in on us from all sides,\u201d he says about the constant sirens. \u201cIt sucks the air out of the air\u201d \u2013 a perfect note of repetition that only unconscious artfulness could strike.<\/p>\n
Suspense is threaded with dread in these chapters. The possibility of happiness, even survival, is heavily taxed by irrecoverable losses.<\/p>\n
Hearing about \u201cThe Sunflower Boys,\u201d a friend asked me, \u201cWhy would anyone want to read that?\u201d<\/p>\n
As Artem freely admits \u2013 with weary wisdom no child should possess \u2013 this is \u201cjust another shattered family.\u201d But that\u2019s the function of a fine novel: to dissolve a dismissive phrase like \u201cjust another\u201d in the milk of human empathy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to start crying,\u201d Artem says. \u201cI\u2019m afraid that, once the tears start, they won\u2019t stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
I know the feeling. I read much of \u201cThe Sunflower Boys\u201d aloud to my wife, but there were moments, honestly, when either I couldn\u2019t go on or she couldn\u2019t bear to hear more, and I would just read in silence.<\/p>\n
Ron Charles reviews books and writes the Book Club newsletter for the Washington Post. He is the book critic for \u201cCBS Sunday Morning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nothing could make the obsequious spectacle earlier this month in Alaska more shocking, but while President Donald Trump…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":170393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-170392","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115080855954955895","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}