A beautifully crafted story about grief that portrays a rich physical and emotional environment.
A man finally finds himself after tragedy turns his life upside down in this novel.
Nico Azzarà is obsessed with time and control, a fixation that allowed him to rise from rags to riches after his family emigrated from Italy to Buenos Aires. But his sense of control is suddenly torn from him when a vacation to the lush wilderness of Patagonia is cut tragically short by an accident that kills his wife and young son. Nico soon returns to the place of the crash, as wrecked inwardly as his crushed Mercedes. The first few days of his stay are recounted slowly as the devastation sinks in, and though his friend Jorge encourages him to return to the city, Nico refuses to leave the one place where he feels closest to the loved ones he lost. Days soon turn to weeks and then to months, with Nico surviving off of fish from the river and meager help from distant friends and strangers, including a kind man named Pablito, who patrols the forest. In time, Nico makes his camp more and more livable with supplies that come his way, and he begins to explore both the landscape around him and the feelings within him, searching for a purpose to continue his life. From beginning to end, Stephens (Business Life Eating Guide, 2016, etc.) strings words together like a true artist, allowing him to paint not only striking scenery, but also authentic emotions. Secondary characters and plotlines are less developed than the primary ones, but these problems only slightly detract from an otherwise captivating tale. The plot isn’t particularly fast-paced or action-fueled; rather, it’s unhurried, thoughtful, and emotional, much like Nico’s state of mind after the accident. Without being too heavy-handed, this story is replete with worthy lessons, such as the importance of treasuring relationships over riches, the powerful impact of true and patient friendship, and the value of pursuing your passions. The strong scenes and messages in this book will likely linger with readers long after they have put it down.
A beautifully crafted story about grief that portrays a rich physical and emotional environment.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-973134-55-8
Page Count: 250
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
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