Book 24: The Ha-Ha, by Dave King

Already picked up by Warner Bros. for Academy Award winner Akiva Goldsman to produce, Dave King's The Ha-Ha introduces one of the most compelling and likeable narrators to appear in a novel in some time. Due to an injury received during the Vietnam War, Howard Kapostash is unable to speak, read or write. Although his intelligence remains normal and he is perfectly able to understand people when they speak to him, the scar on his head reveals him as potentially impaired and puts people off. His life changes when he is asked to take care of the son of a former girlfriend who is going into rehab. With the boy around the house, Howard blooms and becomes a new man, interested in baseball and drawn to the other people who rent rooms in his house. It's just a remarkable, remarkable book and one of the best character studies I've read in some time. Of the published-in-2005 novels I've read so far, it's probably my favorite.