John Michael Cummings

Plot: This book is actually a series of short stories about a young boy named Jason. The stories are all pretty random, the only thing that connects them all is Jason. All 13 stories are events in Jason’s life that made an impact on his childhood. The first few stories focused on his family; on his mother, brothers but mostly on his father. Then the focus shifts and we start to see Jason searching for new friends and meeting a homosexual neighbor which leads to doubts about himself. There are a few risky subjects, some sexual content, especially in Carter, and strong language that you should definitely be on the look out for.

Characters: Jason is a very curious, smart and a big dreamer, but I didn’t relate to him. Although we are in his head the entire time and get to know him pretty well, there was just something...missing. It might have been because I’m a girl and I probably couldn’t really connect with the male perspective. But overall the characters were all very believable. My favorite would definitely have to be his mom; she was just everything you want in a mother.

Cover: I really liked the cover, it was simple which is definitely the opposite of this book.

Overall Impression: This isn’t my typical read and, had I not been contacted, I probably never would have picked it up, but I still enjoyed it. Definitely a good read for adults.… (mere)

“The word ‘home’ raised a smile in us all three,
And one repeated it, smiling just so
That all knew what he meant and none would say.” – Edward Thomas

Did everyone actually know what he meant, or could it be everyone thought they knew and didn’t want to articulate it? Trying to say what you think you know is a good way of learning whether you really know it. Can we ever return home once we’ve left? Is home a reality that can be returned to? I remember talking to a woman about the conflict she risked in her native country. She was glad to be away from it all, but she also longed to return there. That’s where her home was.

Home is where we fit in, but some of us are so dogged by internal or external pain that we don’t actually fit in anywhere with a clean snap. We just hold our place well enough; we appear to flow with the rest of the pattern. Is home where our family is? If so, who is our family? That’s as big a question as the definition of home. Both are subjects in John Michael Cummings’ new dramatic novel, Don’t Forget Me, Bro (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, Dec. 2014).

The story is told by Mark Barr, who returns to his Alma, West Virginia, home after receiving the call that his eldest brother, Steve, has died. Steve was declared mentally ill many years ago, and no one in the family seems to know how to deal with him. He died at age 45. At one point, he was a runner with aspirations of living a long, creative life.

“Forty-five was for car accident victims and the terminally ill,” Mark says. “Steve would be so ashamed. I was glad he wasn’t alive to know he was dead.”

But Mark hadn’t talked to his brother for years before they spoke on the phone last week, and he hasn’t kept up with his other brother or their parents. It has been 11 years since he last visited, and he felt the same today as he did back then—he wanted to get out. Alma and the surrounding mountains were haunted with ugly memories of choices Mark had made and experiences he’d suffered. If this was the place where he fit in, he hated the picture it made.

“All around me,” Mark drones, “mountains were streaked brown like stained commodes, and skeleton-shell barns flashed by, as if retreating. In that moment, I felt that this land had never stopped waiting for me to return, that like an enemy, it had me for life.”

Cummings sustains a good tension throughout this family drama. Even though I didn’t like any of the main characters, I became curious enough to want to see how things panned out. One reason for my curiosity may be an overall weakness. We learn early on that Mark has unresolved issues to discuss with his live-in girlfriend back in New York City, but we don’t learn how bad they are until the middle of the book. At another point, he says he has never been asked certain questions about himself, and I wonder if he has and simply doesn’t remember. As details of Mark’s personality and life unfold, I wonder if he is a reliable narrator. Will we learn in the closing chapters that half of the story comes from Mark’s twisted imagination?

Add to this curiosity a definite plot weakness. Mark arrives at his mother’s worn-out house and soon learns his belligerent, catholic father plans to cremate his brother’s body and avoid holding a funeral. When Mark talked to Steve a few days ago, Steve had asked to be buried next to his grandfather in the church cemetery. Through all the questions and arguments that rise among the Barr family, Steve’s dying wish to be buried is Mark’s driving passion. Should he challenge the cremation legally? Shouldn’t his brother be honored in a better way than being burned up and urned up? Some fuel is thrown on this fire by Mark beginning to question whether Steve was actually mentally ill. If he wasn’t, has the family sustained unimaginable abuse on him for 20 or more years?

But even if Steve hadn't been ill and had been abused by everyone for years, why is Mark so adamant about having him buried? He hasn’t cared enough to call him for years. Why should he care now, or (as I said before) does he really care? Is this the mad fixation of a narrator who twists the world through his own unique kaleidoscope?

John Cummings’ first novel, The Night I Freed John Brown, won The Paterson Prize for Books for Young Readers (Grades 7-12) and was one of ten recommendations by USA TODAY.… (mere)

“Don't Forget Me, Bro by John Michael Cummings is a very well-written slice of life novel about a dysfunctional family in present day West Virginia. It's also the story of three brothers who have escaped their upbringing in different ways. The narrator, Mark, is the one who has left the coal mining hills forever, or so he thinks. After a decade of living in New York, he finally makes that dreaded trip back home for brother Steve's funeral, and is immediately flooded with depressing memories and reminders of why he left. Cummings is quite skillful at showing (instead of telling) his story through details of daily life and the interactions of his characters. Toward the end, when the father, mother and two surviving brothers come together briefly to honor Steve's memory, you get a glimpse of what this family could have been. Only Mark seems to grow as a character, by facing his own demons for the first time. If you like realistic fiction, this is your book.”
—Ruth White, author of Belle Prater's Boy and Mansions of Karma.… (mere)

Families: they love us, they hate us, they confuse us, they support us, they believe in us, they hurt us, they forgive us, they never forget our mistakes …
It’s no good picking and choosing which of the above (in what could be an interminably long list) best applies to your particular family, or mine, because today’s assumption will become tomorrow’s irrelevance.
As author John Michael Cummings shows with such poignant and searing skill in DON’T FORGET ME, BRO families contain all of it. There’s simply no tidy, predictable emotional or dynamic boundary to draw around these most primal of human units. Even those who don’t know their biological families have collective relationships that daily test their autonomy, individuality, self-worth and dreams.
Cummings, who’s spent more than three decades writing about human beings, mainly of the everyday American persuasion, excels in uncovering those beneath-the-skin familial stories that realistically probe uncomfortable, often invisible, areas of life. And even in our current decade of sociological transparency, perhaps nothing is more resistant to illumination in this context than mental illness.
As a broad collection of chemical, biological and/or psychiatric disorders of the brain, it eludes clear-cut treatments and solutions as successfully as families elude pat definitions of who and what they are. When families and their perceptions of mental illness collide, as happens with such gritty persistence in DON’T FORGET ME, BRO all the discomfort of relationships, normal and otherwise, comes to the fore.
Returning home to West Virginia to deal with the premature death of his older brother Steve, long diagnosed as schizophrenic, Mark Barr carries plenty of his own emotional and psychological baggage, including a deep-seated distaste for a father he remembers as abusive, a mother who seems a passive bystander to life, and a middle brother who comes across as just plain weird. With a number of failed relationships on record – including the one that’s falling apart even as he sets out from New York – he’s not so sure about his own mental health either.
“Going back home” stories are often based on narrow cliché-filled themes that focus on a single character or experience. Like series TV shows, they are easier to control and wrap up in a satisfying sentimental or tragic package at the end.
Fortunately, DON’T FORGET ME, BRO isn’t one of them. It’s a gripping emotional and literary journey that hits just about every pothole one can expect to find on life’s road; that part is engaging and sometimes oddly familiar. And when Cummings throws in a few unexpected left turns, thanks to his character’s unpredictable relatives and colleagues, there are moments of surprise and difference to ponder as well. That skilfully managed dichotomy in itself sets this author apart, drawing the reader into places that challenge assumption and attitude.
At the outset, Mark does think this back-home story is all about him, but he’s not driven by ego or self-absorption as much as by fear, worry and chronic indecision. His own identity, perhaps even his future, are on the line.
But as he blunders into memories, people, and artifacts from the chaotic mosaic of his dead brother’s life he rediscovers who Steve really was. In spite of himself he grows into a kind of belated and bewildered stewardship over his brother’s cremated remains, which become a catalyst for revealing ever-deeper layers of family stories he never really knew.
Haunted by the last words he heard Steve utter – “Don’t forget me, bro” – Mark realizes that at the heart of every human existence is the fear of being forgotten, of simply disappearing into cosmic anonymity. After all, even families that can’t stand each other tenaciously remember their own.
With the unexpected complicity of his equally dysfunctional remaining brother, Mark hangs around his hometown, stumbling upon ways to build better memories than the ones he’d fled more than a decade earlier when he went to New York seeking success.
The Barr family changes a little, just enough for its surviving members to actually remain civilly in the same room together. That’s about it. Cummings doesn’t make their story television-comfortable, nor does he eliminate the heavy reality of an uncertain future.
Set against the larger contexts of contemporary economic depression, social despair, fear of the known and unknown, as well as multiple shades of guilt, remorse and anger, in the end DON’T FORGET ME, BRO can only exhale in a long sigh of acceptance.
Cummings adeptly leaves the reader suspended in that fragile moment before the next breath must be taken, yet strangely satisfied that compassion and justice have been attained. DON’T FORGET ME, BRO is a rare thing, a brilliant addition to a theme in which so many other novels under-achieve.
– reviewed by Pauline Finch… (mere)