Hurt People

by Cote Smith

It’s the summer of 1988 in northeastern Kansas, an area home to four prisons that has been shaken by the recent escape of a convict. But for two young brothers in Leavenworth, the only thing that matters is the pool in their apartment complex. Their mother forbids the boys to swim alone, but she’s always at work trying to make ends meet after splitting with their police-officer father. With no one home to supervise, the boys decide to break the rules.

While blissfully practicing their cannonballs and dives, they meet Chris, a mysterious stranger who promises an escape from their broken-home blues. As the older brother and Chris grow closer, the wary younger brother desperately tries to keep his best friend from slipping away.

Beautifully atmospheric and psychologically suspenseful, Cote Smith’s Hurt People will hold you in its grip to the very last page, reminding us that when we’re not paying attention, we often hurt the ones we claim to love the most.

Genres: Fiction, Suspense, Novels, Contemporary, Young Adult, Coming Of Age, Historical Fiction

336 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2016

About the author

Cote Smith grew up in Leavenworth, Kansas, and on various army bases around the country. He earned his MFA from the University of Kansas, and his stories have been featured in One Story, Crazyhorse, and FiveChapters, among other publications. His first novel, Hurt People, was a Finalist for the 2017 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a 2017 Kansas Notable Book Award winner, and winner of the 2017 High Plains First Book Award.

Reviews

[Book Riot Community]

A mysterious stranger creates a rift between two brothers in this great debut, based on Smith's short story of the same name. Two brothers are spending a sweltering 1988 Leavenworth, Kansas summer poolside while their policeman father helps hunt for an escaped convict. But when a mysterious man begins hanging around the pool, they will learn hard lessons in disappointment and a growing loss of innocence. A deep, atmospheric novel of young lives in a prison town.


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[Rand]

Picked this up because of the cover—namely its congruence of an arguably dead medium. Forced myself to rubberneck through the entire thing on behalf of my grim interest in malfeasance and penitence as exemplified by its setting of Leavenworth, Kansas.

The narrator's attention to detail is a case against its realism although one can easily imagine the entire gritty recall to be mediated through the lens of many years and therapeutic efforts. But even still, the question of narration lingers and becomes an unflagging reason to dismiss the painful plot at countless turns. This book reads like a Lifetime movie as directed by Tarantino. There were more than a few moments that I had to remind myself that the entire thing was set in the 1980s. Perhaps the only quality of the entire thing that I really enjoyed, aside from the quality of the prose, is that the narrator and his brother did not have actual names in the text. There were at least two typos, which was disappointing as it did detract from my ability to effectively rubberneck.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somehow I got lost in the end.

[Douglas Lord · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hurt People—is that a direction or a descriptor? This well-written slow burn of a story gives readers a very clear view of what it’s like to be age nine living in an apartment complex in Leavenworth, KS, circa 1988. That may or may not seem like somewhere you want to be, depending on how much you enjoy the accompanying atmosphere of constant tension. Our smart young narrator and his slightly older brother are new in town, and their world is small. There are “…hints of kids. A turned over tricycle, flat tired in the grass. A frayed jump rope, hung from an unreachable branch.” They’re alone, with divorced parents. Dad is a city cop always working; Mom does long hours in the local golf pro shop. There’s an escaped prisoner on the loose, too. The boys consider the nearby woods “…the deep end of the nonpool world and avoided going into them.” Absent friends, and like the child versions of you and me, they play G.I. Joes with plots invented by the older brother that “lasted hours, took over the entire apartment, and contained several startling plot twists.” Oftentimes the bad guys win. Into this limited world appears the mysterious Chris, who lectures the boys about diving into the complex pool. While our young narrator shies away, his brother sees an opportunity and explores Chris as friend, mentor, and approval-giver. VERDICT First novels must be a bitch, and there are so many good elements here—period detail and the sharp characterization of the protagonist are particularly commendable—that it’s tempting to overlook the not-as-good ones. Chief among these is that not a whole lot happens.

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[Melissa Douglas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plot was drawn out. Repetitive

[Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impossible to put down. Authentic, painful, and so well written.

[Chris Blocker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's what works really well about Hurt People:
The child's perspective.
The narrative of Hurt People is told by an eight-year old boy. His view of the world is eye opening and arguably very accurate for a child. At times the author may get away from the voice to make the story clear for the reader, but I believe he does so sparingly and for good reason. For the most part, our narrator is a very average eight-year old:

But in this world, under these trees, I sat down and cried. Softly, as if I might waken the woods. I pulled my knees to my face and sobbed, louder this time, not caring who heard. When my eyes were spent, I lifted my head from my legs. The wet I left behind was a blob on my bony knee. I let my mind play the cloud game and tried to make a shape. Something that would cheer me up, replace my sea story. Something that would tell me to get on my feet, to keep moving. All I could think of, though, was the shape the chalk kid had drawn what seemed long ago. Before I learned the secrets of the Stranger. Before the kid and mom's apartment was robbed. Before Sandy and Rick, my dad, my mom, and everything else.

As I type this passage, I notice and question a couple details. Would this child use an astute phrase such as “waken the woods”? Maybe not, but it could easily be the kind of phrase that only a poet or a child could come up with. The other is “my eyes were spent.” This is a little harder for me to grasp. The overwhelming majority of eight year olds would not use “spent” to illustrate the end of weeping and it is my believe that the narrator of Hurt People would fall into the majority. And it's little things like this that pull me out of the otherwise flawlessly told paragraph.

Still, there's so much in this paragraph alone that I love. “The wet I left behind was a blob on my bony knee.” The wet, a blob... This is such a great sentence and totally believable. Then immediately, from a child who is sobbing uncontrollably, we get “I let my mind play the cloud game and tried to make a shape.” It's not unlike people to quickly let their logical mind take hold of a terrible situation and begin to make shapes out of nothing. It's even more indicative of a child. This detail is perfect and this story is filled with them.

Here's what doesn't work so well with Hurt People:
The adults. Now we're seeing everything through a child's lens, so that may play a role here. Even so, the actions of the adults seem grossly absurd. Honestly, these are the single worst parents I've ever read about who were not on trial or condemned for their poor parenting. These are parents who constantly put their children in danger and do not think twice about it. And they're incredibly dumb to boot. The list of offenses is far too long, but a few that come to mind include good old policeman dad abandoning the boys at night to go to the bar and responding to an emergency call of a prowler, leaving the kids in his cruiser while he investigates. Mom leaves the children completely unattended every day, lets her son run into an apartment building that could collapse at any moment, and is dating a man who verbally and physically abuses the children in front of her.

It's not just the parents who lack believability. Everything about the town seems exaggerated. The promise of a tornado sends this Kansas town into a frenzy. I've lived in Kansas all my life and I promise you, most people treat such storms as either routine or as an event to be viewed with awe, what I call "the double rainbow effect." Leavenworth itself is treated as a Podunk town, but no one ever acknowledges that it is a part of the Kansas City metropolitan area. Sure, it's on the very edge and at the time this novel is based there would've been a good fifteen miles separating it from the nearest place of interest, but you'd think these people had never seen a skyscraper or been anywhere with a crowd. I promise you most of Leavenworth probably makes a semi-regular journey to KC. Yet, it's as though the author wanted to convince you they were a thousand miles from civilization.

And this is where I want to go back to the perspective of a child. Overall, Hurt People seems lazy and sloppy. Exaggerations and characterizations are on every other page. Frankly, the story of a prison escapee and the appearance of the new friend, Chris, make no sense. It was enough to annoy and anger me as a reader. Half way through this story all the way through the end I was irritated by the absurdity. I finished the novel and slapped a generous three-star rating on it and wondered how I could approach this review. A little distance has convinced me that maybe—and I'm not entirely sold on this possibility—Smith's debut is better than I initially thought.

I still think there are mistakes in perspective and that the story could've been tighter and more logical while in the mind of an eight-year old narrator, but I have to give Smith the benefit of the doubt: how would an eight year old tell this story? Would his childhood fear during a tornado merge onto the faces of other residents? Would his lack of life experience topped by a prison escape cause him to feel isolated? Would he paint his parents as perfect even though they frankly should have lost custody of him? Did the rest of Leavenworth even know about his parents' poor choices or did they turn a blind eye to everything because the boys' father was a police officer? There's more to this story beneath the telling of this child and it's only by looking through the cracks that one cannot help but notice that a reader may begin to see the true story.

Hurt People is not a perfect book and it was certainly a difficult read in more than one way, but I'm beginning to see that some of the complaints leveled at the novel are probably the result of not getting into the mind of an eight year old narrator. Smith missed the marked himself occasionally, but I think he did much better than most of us could have and that is why most of us are missing the parts of this novel done right. I'm bumping this one up to four stars and am eager to see what perspective the author takes in his next novel.

[Fee · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit too slow-paced, but the author did a great job narrating events and describing feelings from the point of view of an eight-year-old boy. Some pretty powerful scenes here and there, realistically written about being hurt and passing hurt onto others. Not an entirely memorable read, but a very good one nonetheless.

[Desiree · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very slow and then what feels like an abrupt ending with little wrap-up

[Hayley Lekas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m really not sure how this book got on to my bookshelf, but I am very glad it did.

Raw, honest, sad, and painful, this novel is a whole lot of “hurt people” hurting people. The characters, while most of them are very unlikable, have these raw moments where you see their humanoid characteristics and you see them as more than a character in a plot but complex beings who’ve had a past. That being said, there are a fair share of one dimensional characters, as well.

The whole plot is intriguing, focusing on an escaped convict and all other “bad” people in a town where there are prisons around every corner. The two young boys are basically neglected by their recently divorced parents and left to fend for themselves for entertainment, food, and safety. The whole novel takes place in the youngest brothers perspective, and interesting enough you never learn the names of either brother. This is definitely symbolic for something, I am not quite sure of: the ability that this could happen to anyone, lack of identities, the list goes on. You also are always hearing about “the stranger” to later learn his name and the miscommunication of names comes up - further inflating that there is a point of the boys names never being identified.

Beyond that, the plot takes you through a maze of emotions and series of events where character development is at an all time high for both brothers. At only 8 and 10, these kids see and realize more about what a true villain is and who really has the capability to hurt you.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a 3 or a 4 depending on how annoyed you get hearing about the mundane day to day events in the life of an 8 year old. Yes, you built a fort. But as the reader I don't need to hear about it every time. Or about your GI Joes. Or most of the things that are important to an 8 year old. Sure I like the color that it added to the book but I didn't need quite so much of it. In some ways I worried that this would be all the book was about and that what I thought the main story was would get lost. Thankfully, it does come out but is as expected and almost as predictable as wondering if an 8 year old wants an Otter Pop. And finally, while I felt for the 2 boys in the story, I had no compassion for any of the grown-ups. They were basically mean to each other and bordered on abusive to the boys.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

ARC for review - EPD - March 1, 2016.

Story of two very young brother living in Leavenworth, Kansas in the late 1980s – their parents are newly divorced and there’s never enough money or adult supervision so they spend their time at the apartment complex pool. There they meet a young man named Chris and any astute reader is going to see what is coming, but the story is told so skillfully from the younger brother’s point of view that you can forgive HIM for not seeing or understanding what is happening. Good, slightly depressing book about adult relationships from a child’s perspective. I would give it a solid three stars.

[Laura McGee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book takes place in the same area I grew up in, so I was immediately drawn to the towns descriptions, as well as the authors take on the people who live there. The story itself builds and builds and keeps you very interested. I was surprised at the ending and thought it was a thoroughly enjoyable book.

[Colton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad book, but I found myself skimming quite a bit to the end. I like slow-paced books, but this one seemed to contain quite a bit of things not happening, which other reviewers have noted. I also predicted the ending early on, which rarely happens for me. Still, I'd say it's worth a look, and I'm interested in seeing what comes next from this author.

[Mark Abersold · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this because for my 10 to Try this year, I needed to read a book set where I was born. I don't have any memories of Leavenworth Kansas - my family moved out not long after my birth and I haven't returned, and likely will never return. I've only ever really had vague ideas of what life there might be like, and this book more or less supports those ideas: flat, hot, and kind of a dead end.

On the whole this book isn't really my style, I appreciate the setting but I couldn't really get into the story. It was frustrating to see the protagonist and his brother make obviously terrible decisions, but then again children aren't always known for their risk assessment.

If you like bleak depictions of middle America, this book might be for you. For everyone else, you'd probably be better off with something a bit more optimistic.

[Elyse Rudin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reminded me of the movie,"The Florida Project ". Two brothers ages 9 and 11 live with their mother in a run down apartment building. Their father is a cop that they see on weekends. The brothers are mostly alone day and night. They are befriended by a man who the older brother develops a close relationship with while the younger brother is jealous of this "friendship ". They live near Leavenworth prison and a prisoner has escaped leading the reader to wonder if the man is the escaped prisoner. Very little happens in the story. Each day is the same and it's a slow read. I liked the boys and their honest brotherly relationship but I would not recommend as the pace is slow and while the ending was told well it just had no oomph.

[Jane Arnoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of two unnamed brothers who are left to their own devices one summer after their parents' separation. The parents love the boys dearly but just don't pay enough attention to what they might be doing alone all day. The boys ages aren't identified either but I would guess around 11 and 13. This was a little bit of a slow start for me but am glad I stuck with it. The author captures the minds and hearts of boys this age so very well as well as the parents' struggles to retain their adult lives and identities. I don't want to say much more except if you are a fan of well drawn characters and a very relatable family exploration, pick this one up.

Definitely recommended.

[Alberto Ramirez · Rating 3 out of 5]

The novel seemed to do a great job of capturing the doldrums of summer vacation experienced two turn key brothers and having their world corcle the drain in a melodic, sometimes mind numbing reptition.

The challenges coming their way seem to always be on full display to the reader and only made interesting through the distracted eyes of a young boy, experiencing life as it happens to him. Many times, it leaves the reader in suspense because they worry on behalf of the naive protagonist, but through the novel's playfulness, succumb to his whims, and find themselves also caught off guard by the once thought to be transparent danger.

[aqmir alhamdi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The beginning of the story it was very packed with the thoughts I've wanted, and so on I read through the middle part it caught my jaw dropped.

Didn't expect it to be in that way, and I had another expectations to be honest. This is not the first time of me reading a psychological fiction, I've read the restless souls and it's actually brutal story for me.

Somehow hurt people is focusing more to the topic of abusive, lack thereof self, traumatized and broken family.

It's just my opinion, I understand why some readers could lost in the story.

[Eunice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some may say that this is a slow-burn read which I agree with but what I love about this and gave it 4 is I can't stop reading and turning the pages. Cote Smith's style of writing is excellent. I believe that good writing is not being able to take your eyes off the page. It’s an energy that comes from the writer's imagination and passion for his subject.
When a book sucks you in and you can't stop reading, that's when you know it's good.

[poetic · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, in a sense, is pretty predictable but overall still pretty interesting. I was very drawn to it and couldn’t put it down, and I get bored with books pretty easily. The main point is sort of lost and it takes a while to get to the “good stuff” but still was very well worth the read in my opinion.

[Amy Hearting]

Back in my KC days Cote Smith released a book and did a book talk at the Plaza location. (miss those events!). This book was written by a ku grad and took place in Leavenworth KS. Me being a Kansas girl AND teaching in Leavenworth it was an easy yes. Glad I finally made time to read it. :). If any other KS friends would like it next I'm happy to mail it away.

[Sheryl V · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected more from this book.

Started out promising, but it really did feel like it was a broken record on repeat sometimes. The author does however capture the nuances and thought process of a child very very well.

Not very memorable though written well in certain areas, wouldn't pick up again

[Tori · Rating 3 out of 5]

1/5 books from my Big Bad Wolf haul. It was slow-paced, like you know something bad is going to happen, but the intensity lowers because you don’t know when it’s going to happen.

The title was also vague. But I loved what the mother said that it makes me understand what the title is about.

“Hurt people hurt people.”

[Richard R · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started with a good voice that lured me in. But this gradually became repetitive and annoying as it became clear that no other element of the story had any merit. Poor and lazy character development that relied on cliches. and contrived, unrealistic plot. A real struggle to finish.

[Flor Plache · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found myself skipping thru the book,it was really boring took forever to get to the main plot of the book and when it finally did there was no excitement or desire to keep reading or keeping me in edge the only reason I even finished this book was because I hate not finishing book.

[Toni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! Crazy!

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent first novel. Interesting story. This book was selected as a Kansas Notable book for 2017.

[Zu Y · Rating 3 out of 5]

About a family torn apart, struggling parents n eventually connected back after a tragedy..
A good read, quite slowww moving.

[Tim Vandall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Smith is a fabulous author. The characters come to life and you can visualize the characters so well you feel like you are there. I was on the edge of my seat. A wonderful read!