Book Review: Some Go Hungry by J. Patrick Redmond

ISBN: 1617754676
Published: May 17th, 2016
Publisher: Kaylie Jones Books
Received: purchased
Read from May 17th to 25th, 2017
Synopsis from Goodreads:

Some Go Hungry is a fictional account drawn from the author's own experiences working in his family's provincial Indiana restaurant--and wrestling with his sexual orientation--in a town that was rocked by the scandalous murder of his gay high school classmate in the 1980s.
Now a young man who has embraced his sexuality, Grey Daniels returns from Miami Beach, Florida, to Fort Sackville, Indiana, to run Daniels' Family Buffet for his ailing father. Understanding that knowledge of his sexuality may reap disastrous results on his family's half-century-old restaurant legacy--a popular Sunday dinner spot for the after-church crowd--Grey struggles to live his authentic, openly gay life. He is put to the test when his former high school lover--and fellow classmate of the murdered student--returns to town as the youth pastor and choir director of the local fundamentalist Christian church.
Some Go Hungry is the story of a man forced to choose between the happiness of others and his own joy, all the while realizing that compromising oneself--sacrificing your soul for the sake of others--is not living, but death.

Review:

As soon as I heard about this book, I knew I had to read it. Some Go Hungry takes place in southern Indiana, the same place I grew up. While the town in the book, Fort Sackville, is fictional, it seems to be a fictional version of Vincinnes. Portions of the book also take place in Evansville (which is essentially considered a metropolis to Fort Sackville just like it is my hometown), and while they're never shown in the book, it was cool to see Indianapolis and even Greenwood mentioned.

The book is about a gay man who has grown up in Indiana. His family owns a restaurant that he now manages, and he's stayed in the closet in Fort Sackville his entire life because he doesn't want to ruin his family's restaurant. He knows that no one in town will continue to eat there if they know that he's gay.

This book doesn't offer an idyllic picture of southern Indiana, but it is, without a doubt, realistic. I could recognize the town and how it operates. It was cool, if had times disheartening, to read. For me, that really helped the book.

There were a lot of times where I wasn't a huge fan of the writing style. There was a lot of description that felt unnecessary. That was the biggest fault of the book for me. There were also times where the characterization felt off. Sometimes a character would be in a scene but go through the whole thing and only speak one line, making it easy to forget that they were even there. It didn't feel quite like a realistic conversation. Even more than that, after reading the entire thing, I was left feeling like some characters would have been better off being cut out completely (such as the main character's brother) because they did/said so little and seemed to serve no purpose to the plot other than just being there and barely speaking.

The story, though, was touching, and I did enjoy it more than I disliked it.