Special Edition Review: The Watchman by Matt Langford

This review was originally published on Underground Book Reviews May 13, 2013. I've modified the format to fit this blogs review format, but otherwise the review is exactly how it was written in 2013. The Watchman by Matt Langford is an example of what would classify as a EXCEPTIONALLY RECOMMENDED novel. 

"EXCEPTIONALLY RECOMMENDED" - A transformative reading  experience (Click here for explanation of Rule One rating system)
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The overall story experience challenges and elevates the reader on an emotional and intellectual level. This book transcends genre. and is "must-reading" for a wider audience.  The reader is transformed by the experience, and will think of the book often and perhaps occasionally reread it. The book not only brings something new to the genre, but something completely new to literature itself. This book is a potential award-winner. ​

TITLE: The Watchman
PUBLISHER: None Listed
AUTHOR: Matt Langford
GENRE(S): Literary Fiction
PUBLICATION DATE: April 22, 2013
CURRENT AMAZON REVIEWS: 31/3.6 Star Average

​What is the difference between a good book and a great book?  People talk about a good book, perhaps recommend it to a friend or even rate it on Amazon. On the other hand, a great book connects in a very personal way. A  great book is inherently honest, without a shred of manipulation. It gets inside  you... tugs, digs, and performs reconstructive surgery on your heart and soul. A  great book leaves you no place to hide and forever changes you to the day you die. Is The Watchman by debut novelist Matt Langford such a book?

Adam is a mentally disabled teenager caught up in the everyday  maelstrom we call life. He cannot speak beyond a few simple words. Most of his  language is made up and known only to him. He possesses a very limited grasp of the past, with even less understanding of the future. Everything exists in the now, and revolves around him. Adam’s family, which is the same as  saying his entire universe, is falling apart. His younger brother and sister  are growing up and changing in ways he cannot comprehend. His parents’ marriage slowly grows cold under strain of a father’s joblessness and alcoholism. Adam is also changing, physically becoming a man, imposing more unrelenting demands and needs upon an already stressed family. The book begins with a short entry from an expecting mother’s journal, full of hope and love for the baby she carries inside. The Watchman ends with a father’s touching connection with his oldest son. The Watchman is an ambitious book by any standard, but Matt Langford took this challenge to a higher level.  

The author tells this story exclusively through Adam’s perspective. In doing so, he forces the reader to actively participate and make their own translations of Adam’s world, their own conclusions about the motivations of the “normal” people surrounding him. Langford pulls this off masterfully. With short, simple and brutally effective prose, Langford creates more character development, more humanity, in a few sentences than most authors can create in whole chapters. In only 180 pages Langford boils a family’s existence down to its raw essence. 

This is the point in my review where I usually point out  something I found wrong with the book. If there were editing problems with The Watchman, I didn’t notice. I was too busy losing myself in the story. For two days it took over my life. A book hasn’t done that to me since I was a kid. 

Is The Watchman a Five Star novel? Of course, but good books can earn Five Stars. Five Stars seems like such a small kudo for such a profound novel. So, does The Watchman qualify as a great book? 

A few nights ago I attended my child’s school play. During the presentation loud, inappropriate laughter and other strange noises emanated from the back row. There, an obviously mentally disabled boy of perhaps thirteen squirmed next to his mother. He smiled, touched, flailed and spoke in a language known only to him. Tenderly, and with the utmost patience, his mother tried to simultaneously restrain her boy while watching her other child in the play. It could have been a scene right out of The Watchman. Until the day I die I will never look at a mentally disabled person, or their family, again without thinking of Adam.

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