Review: Characters that drew me into a story that is often ominous and sinister, but always hopeful
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 23, 2013
As I read Drawn, I was constantly reminded of two things.  The Beatles' song, Eleanor Rigby, which contains the poetic refrain,"All the lonely people, where do they all come from? All the lonely people, Where do they all belong?" and Dean Koontz's book Strangers. Like Koontz's Strangers, the title and cover illustration imply that the characters will be drawn together into a macabre setting.  As I started reading I wondered how many people would be drawn.  One?  Two?  The answer turns out to be five.  Four protagonists and one villain.I became involved with the internal world of each character despite the fact that the ending was inevitable--evil gets defeated, and the good guys come out on top, better off even though they've gone through hell in this world first. What I wanted to know was how, and Hankins pulls that off with a plot that has more than a few twists and turns.Let's look at how Hankins' characters motivated me to keep turning the pages:"Alice Norville had no idea what the boy [in the painting she was showing to an art instructor whose class she desperately wanted to take to further her skills] was pointing at.  She didn't even remember painting him....Yet, there he was, carefully rendered in acrylics in her own hand, one of several kids playing in the park." I wondered how Alice could do this.  And, when the boy emerges again and again in different paintings, my conclusion is that she didn't paint him in.  So who did? I wanted to know.  Later, we discover this about Alice, "...she had to admit she was lonely.  If she held a traditional job, she might have found friends through it...." ("All the lonely people, where do they all come from?")"Boone Forrester sat where he always sat at the end of the bar, where the smooth, shiny mahogany met the cheap pine paneling.  No one could sit to his right. He never sat anywhere else.  If this seat was occupied when he came in, Kenny the bartender politely asked whoever was sitting there to find another stool..."  Why?  Why would a bartender do this for a customer?  I had to know.  Later, I gradually discover that Boone is a severe agoraphobic and has isolated himself, physically and emotionally and desperately needs to be in touch with other human beings. Boone is driven from his home by a paranormal force and against all odds finally manages to cross the street and begin his quest to seek personal redemption. ("All the lonely people, where do they all come from?")[The salesperson with whom elderly Nathan Zeltner was conversing]  "couldn't know that Nathan's soundtrack was the hum of his refrigerator and persistent drip from a bathroom faucet.  He didn't want to add the lonely incessant ticking of a clock." There have been times in my life when I've been lonely, and I identified with this behavior. When Nathan is driven to find his adult son, who may still be alive, he will eventually be drawn into the lives of the other hero Miguel Ortiz and the villain, Larry Catrell. ("All the lonely people, where do they all belong?")Miguel Ortiz is a 12-year old who has been living on the streets of Philadelphia for the last two years because he ran away from his family to avoid abuse. Only, he never thought life on streets would be as hard or as lonely as it was. He went home, but his family had moved. He is truly on his own when we meet him, "I saw it first."/"The hell you did."/"The hell you didn't.  Let go."/ "But Miguel wasn't about to let go. He hadn't eaten since he'd given his best puppy eyes to a well-dressed couple outside of a Dunkin Donuts that morning and they'd given him a big handful of change. Not enough for a breakfast sandwich, but enough for a doughnut and orange juice."  ... "So Miguel would be damned if he was going to let go of the McDonald's bag he'd rescued from a trash can.  From the weight of it, he guessed there was half a sandwich of some kind inside, maybe a cheeseburger..."So here we have it, four characters each lonely in a different way, each needing to reconnect with humanity to save themselves, drawn together by circumstances and the paranormal.In essence, this book is about this bit of advice that Alice's mother gave her about her unhappy marriage. "If you're happy, great, you're happy, and if you're sad, then maybe you're sad enough to do something about it, to make whatever changes you need to make.  But if you're somewhere in the middle, well, then you may just keep doing what you're doing."I find the characters memorable, like characters in Koontz's Strangers, particularly Dominic Corvaisis whom I still think about years after having read the book.Hankins wrings  some very real chills from Drawn, but this isn't a horror novel. It's ominous and sinister at times, It's more of a "how will they" fix things?  How will the world be made right?  How will the bad guy, Larry, get his comeuppance?  If you're looking for a character-driven story with chilling elements and a dash of the paranormal, you'll enjoy Drawn.This is the third Hankins book that I've read, and they're all different. My personal favorite isBrothers and Bones.  I recommendDrawnas well asJack of Spades, and I look forward to reading more Hankins.