The+God+of+War

//**﻿The God of War **// Marisa silver  //**From Publishers Weekly**//  An elegantly observed coming-of-age story steeped in poverty and violence, this novel by the author of //No Direction Home// offers a poignant and often heartbreaking account of Ares Ramirez. The year is 1978, and 12-year-old Ares has outgrown the cramped trailer in the California desert that he shares with his mother, Laurel, and six-year-old brother, Malcolm. Malcolm has profound developmental disabilities, but Laurel, out of a free-spirited and self-righteous view of motherhood, has only recently (and very reluctantly) allowed Malcolm to get treatment. A horrific childhood accident and encroaching adolescence, meanwhile, fill Ares with a potent and inarticulate anger. In the absence of any outlet for his preoccupation with violence, Ares falls into an uneasy friendship with Kevin, the troubled foster child of Malcolm's new speech therapist. Conflict with Laurel, her on-again-off-again boyfriend and a small community that will not accept Malcolm, drive Ares into Kevin's manipulative sway, and Ares will have to choose between protecting his family or embracing the violence building inside him. The characters are painted with compassion and unflinching honesty, and the climax is pithy and consequential. //(Apr.)//

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Marisa Silver's //The God of War// is one of the few authors whos work ive read, that is not afraid of emotion. Her pages are littered with the metaphors of a literary genius, that will leave you questioning the nature of life itself, and each of its accesories. She tells the story of a troubled twelve years old, to whom the changes of adolesence generate the minutest of concern. Ares, the boy, is constantly haunted by his certainty that he is the sole cause of his younger brother, malcom's, disabilites. Malcom cannot speak, write, or communicate in any way. The only sign of a soul, or any thoughts, within malcoms body, is his excitment when he is in the presence of the birds that flock to his home so often. The two reside by the //accidentally// man made "oasis" of the salton sea; the very familiar set of many scenes from Sean Penn's //Into the Wild.// Not only is Ares troubled by the fruits of his own fault, but also the decisions of his