Book Review: John Oakes' "ANGRY ELF"

Angry Elf follows the character Winton Chevalier's life several years before the events of The Right Kind of Stupid as he comes to terms with life as an achondroplasic dwarf and the son of a decorated police officer.

I'm not one to recount plots in reviews, but the core of the story is Winton's angst about having to resort to being a stereotype to make ends meet, and the nasty, defensive attitude that arises because of it. Needless to say, in classic Oakes style, Winton gets the good old Scrooge treatment.

What impressed me the most about Angry is how empathetic and incisive Oakes is with portraying a dwarf. Where other, lesser writers could have made Winton a two-dimensional joke or a piece of the scenery, Oakes pulls a G. R. R. Martin and does this Texan Tyrion every justice possible. Winton is an emotionally invested and realized character, and Oakes doesn't pull any punches or withhold anything the character deserves--he gets into fights, he has a love interest, he gets arrested, other characters lecture him.

He might be in a four-foot body, but he has a six-foot soul and I think that deserves a five-star rating.

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