Changes

Your heart bleeds for both boys right from the beginning, but Williams allows Luke his rose-tinted memories at first and so your sympathy is very much of the surface, isn't-it-awful-poor-lamb, variety. Gradually, though, as the bigger picture is revealed and we see the warts-and-all life that Luke loved and - with the death of his mother - lost, the superficiality disappears and it's not sympathy you feel, it's empathy. It's all so very real. But the world continues to turn, life goes on, and Jon arrives as the type of waif and stray Luke's mother would have welcomed, and becomes the catalyst for healing.  I read the last page of ''Luke and Jon'' with a real sense of regret that it was all over.