From Library Journal
In her eighth novel, Barfoot (Getting Over Edgar) explores the effects of an act of violence on both the perpetrator and the victim. At 49, Isla has found happiness in her second marriage to attorney Lyle. She loves her two grown children, too, although she'd be the first to admit that she's not happy about their lives: daughter Alix has joined a cult, and son Jamie is drifting from job to job after recovering from a teenage drug habit. Living in the same community as Isla and her family, 17-year-old Roddy is restless and dissatisfied with small-town life. In order to finance their scheme to run away to the nearest big city, Roddy and best friend Mike set up a fake robbery at the ice cream store where Mike works. Isla enters the store at precisely the wrong moment, Roddy panics, a gun goes off, and both Isla and Roddy must learn to live with the consequences: Isla is a paraplegic, and Roddy spends more than a year in jail. Alternating viewpoints between these two characters, Barfoot brilliantly conveys how out of tragedy can come not only acceptance of changed circumstances but a sort of grace. Readers can't help but admire Isla's courage. All of award-winning Canadian novelist Barfoot's earlier books are out of print in the United States, which is a shame; after finishing Critical Injuries, those who enjoy good, character-driven fiction will surely want to read her earlier books as well. Recommended for public libraries large and small. Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
When Isla wakes up her first thought is that she's dead, but as her husband Lyle's worried face comes into focus, she realizes she's not. She just can't move. At 49 Isla revels in her second marriage and loves her advertising career, a happy life forever changed when she walks in on a robbery and the startled gunman, 17-year-old Roddy, shoots. He and his best friend, Mike, planned to rob the ice cream parlor where Mike works when no one would be around to get hurt, but they didn't plan on Lyle and Isla's ice cream cravings. As Isla lies frozen in a hospital bed and Roddy emotionally freezes everyone out as he lies hopeless in jail, their thoughts are remarkably similar as they revisit the people and events that shaped their lives and worry about each other. Canadian author Barfoot smoothly sifts the conscious and subconscious minds of her protagonists, invoking sympathy for Isla and understanding, even forgiveness, for Roddy in this funny and sad novel of innocence destroyed and wisdom gained. Melanie Duncan
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New York Times Book Review
"Joan Barfoot's voice is unsentimental, wry, and powerful."
Chicago Tribune
"Joan Barfoot proves a fount of emotional wisdom."
Book Description
A brilliantly original and laceratingly funny novel about ordinary people thrown from the course of their lives by extraordinary events. Isla at forty-nine is reveling in second chances. Her first marriage ended horrifically, but her career thrives. Her two grown children are still reverberating from the shock of their father's actions, but she has hopes for their recovery. And she has found in Lyle, her second husband, a man she both loves and trusts. Roddy is seventeen, restless and anxious to escape the confines of his small town. He and his best friend, dreaming of glittering, more glamorous city vistas, devise a plan that will deliver them there, and into the lives they have imagined. But in the moment of an ill-timed encounter, everything changes for both Isla and Roddy, and in the wake of that moment, each must reconstruct their lives on new and unexpected foundations. Critical Injuries is a stunning achievement, a novel of catastrophe, of hope and forgiveness, and of tenuous flashes of grace.
About the Author
Joan Barfoot's quirky, wise, and witty books have been finding enthusiastic readers since 1978, when Abra won the Books in Canada First Novel Award. She is the author of eight previous novels, including Getting Over Edgar and Dancing in the Dark, and is the winner of the prestigious Marian Engel Award. She lives in Toronto.
Critical Injuries FROM THE PUBLISHER
After years of disappointment, forty-nine-year-old Isla is finally content in her second marriage to Lyle. Seventeen-year-old Roddy, on the other hand, is a faltering student, and occasional shoplifter trying to make sense of his life. Their worlds collide one hot August afternoon when a fake robbery organised by Roddy and his friend Mike goes horribly wrong, leaving Isla with a bullet lodged in her spine. With Roddy 'immobilised' in gaol and Isla lying paralysed in the hospital, they both have lots of time to reflect upon where it all went wrong.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
In her eighth novel, Barfoot (Getting Over Edgar) explores the effects of an act of violence on both the perpetrator and the victim. At 49, Isla has found happiness in her second marriage to attorney Lyle. She loves her two grown children, too, although she'd be the first to admit that she's not happy about their lives: daughter Alix has joined a cult, and son Jamie is drifting from job to job after recovering from a teenage drug habit. Living in the same community as Isla and her family, 17-year-old Roddy is restless and dissatisfied with small-town life. In order to finance their scheme to run away to the nearest big city, Roddy and best friend Mike set up a fake robbery at the ice cream store where Mike works. Isla enters the store at precisely the wrong moment, Roddy panics, a gun goes off, and both Isla and Roddy must learn to live with the consequences: Isla is a paraplegic, and Roddy spends more than a year in jail. Alternating viewpoints between these two characters, Barfoot brilliantly conveys how out of tragedy can come not only acceptance of changed circumstances but a sort of grace. Readers can't help but admire Isla's courage. All of award-winning Canadian novelist Barfoot's earlier books are out of print in the United States, which is a shame; after finishing Critical Injuries, those who enjoy good, character-driven fiction will surely want to read her earlier books as well. Recommended for public libraries large and small. Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
The life of a surviving victim converges with that of her teenaged assailant: a story from award-winning Canadian author Barfoot that's strongest at its start. Isla, at 49, finally feels secure in a happy second marriage and has hopes for her troubled grown children. Then she walks in on a robbery and is shot by Roddy, the panicked teenager. These facts emerge brokenly but effectively as Isla comes to in the hospital, paralyzed. At the same time, Roddy is fleeing, his thoughts revealing more confusion than badness. His relief, when he is captured, approaches joy. Barfoot (Duet For Three, 1986, not reviewed), whose ninth novel (but only second US publication) this is, is masterful at entering the consciousness of each: Isla's flickering thoughts, for example, her wittiness, her realistic and not always reasonable anger. Roddy, 17, comes across less as a monster than simply as a kid-a portrayal that's thoughtful, even brave, of Barfoot given today's willingness to demonize violent youth. The unreality of Roddy's adolescent thinking is well captured, as are his swings between sincere remorse and selfishness. But the story loses steam when Isla focuses on her past and on her first husband's terrible secret that led their son to drug addiction and their daughter to a cult. Unfortunately, these putatively horrific facts are withheld for so long that once they're revealed-however bad-they may elicit a shrug. Possibly that's Barfoot's point-that trauma to someone who experiences it may seem far less significant to someone on the outside-but the letdown after such buildup hurts the book. Eschewing the easy happy ending, Barfoot allows no miracle cure for Isla, but credibility is strained by theperfect second husband, the world's most supportive mother, and a daughter-now free of the cult-who's able to redeem Roddy through mysterious grace. An ordinary woman and her family face extreme challenges, putting this one in contention for wide readership-and yet those expecting a genuine accounting won't find it a winner.
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