#494 The Hammer Man- Toni Cade Bambara

#494 The Hammer Man- Toni Cade Bambara

It is a violent world. The narrator, a school girl, says something mean and unwise to Manny, a big oaf that carries a hammer in his bag and likely is mentally unstable.

“Manny was supposed to be crazy. That was his story. To say you were bad put some people off. But to say you were crazy, you were officially not to be messed with.”

Manny doesn’t care that she’s just a girl, so now, he’s holding vigil outside her house for days ready to kill her when she comes back out. In a predictable but still crazy escalation, the mothers get in a fight because Manny’s mom is almost as crazy as he is; the girls father smashes Manny’s brother’s head into a mail box, Manny’s uncle threatens her father—and somehow Manny falls off the roof, ending the affair.

I guess you could chalk all that up to “it is a violent world”, but later on the girl imagines a world—not far from this one—that is much more violent and much more senseless.

Rating: 8-7-7-7 Total= 29