I had been wanting to read this book anyway but the reason I started was because the chapters were short. You see it was during the great blizzard dig out of ’09 a few months back and in between all of the shoveling and other stuff I wanted a book that would be kind of a quick read and that I could dip in and out of pretty easily. Haiku seemed the perfect choice as Vachss nearly ventures into the micro chapter mode of Two Trains Running.
The characters are all sympathetically portrayed and we come to know all of them well. As an aside — I swear that Lamont is a character from the movie The Warriors gone to seed all these years later. What these characters do for us is provide for an embedded report into the out in the open secret plight of homeless people and the network of people who try to help them.
Parts of the narrative almost take on a secondary world quality as we have to learn the subtleties of their ways of life. One of the other dynamics that we come to appreciate is how these people have banded together in a formed family, how they function as a unit and how they are their for each other.
This is an odd book in the sense that it’s hard to attach preconceived notions to it therefore whatever it did was unexpected keeping the reading experience fresh. Is it a mystery? Is it a social commentary? Is it a character study? Yes to all of these and others too.
What it is ultimately is a book with something to say under the guise of a quick read. And that ain’t a bad thing.
