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This Bright River
Ben Hanson's aimless life has bottomed out after a series of bad decisions, but a surprising offer from his father draws him home to Wisconsin. There, he finds his family fractured, still reeling from his cousin's mysterious death a decade earlier.
Lauren Sheehan abandoned her career in medicine after a series of violent events abroad. Now she's back in the safest place she knows—the same small Wisconsin town where she and Ben grew up—hiding from a world that has only brought her heartache.
As Lauren cautiously expands her horizons and Ben tries to unravel the mysteries of his family and himself, their paths intersect. Could each be exactly what the other needs?
Lauren Sheehan abandoned her career in medicine after a series of violent events abroad. Now she's back in the safest place she knows—the same small Wisconsin town where she and Ben grew up—hiding from a world that has only brought her heartache.
As Lauren cautiously expands her horizons and Ben tries to unravel the mysteries of his family and himself, their paths intersect. Could each be exactly what the other needs?
464 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
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1609 people want to read
About the author
Patrick Somerville
15 books109 followersI'm a fiction writer from Wisconsin, living in Chicago.
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July 6, 2012I'm not totally sure this sounds like my kind of book, but holy crap, check out this crazy story. The book was given a pretty damning review in the Times, but it became immediately apparent that the critic had misread an early scene, and therefore wrongly interpreted the entire plot. Another person from the Times then reached out to the author to verify this mistake—via a fake email address set up for one of the book's characters. They all—the Times person, the author, and the character—worked together to craft the best possible correction / redaction to the erroneous review. And Patrick winds up writing the preposterously gracious and reasonable article in Slate that I linked above. Super super crazy.
September 24, 2015
We begin with a collection of crimes.
From their midst emerges Benjamin Hanson, thirty-two, and yet another well-educated misfit whose slacker tendencies managed to derail his life. Fresh from a two-year stint at a minimum security prison for an act that exemplifies the tragic laxity of his awareness, Ben has been put on course by his parents and directed to his hometown. The Wisconsin residence of a deceased uncle has been vandalized by carousing teens. He's instructed to assess the damage and prepare the house for sale. He must also find a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. And then, of course, he'll have to take a look at the contents of the laptop he stole from his business partner on his way from prison to the airport.
Ben is troubled. Clearly. Yet what sets him apart from all the other modern-day literary screw-ups is the intelligence of his author. Patrick Somerville doesn't content himself with surfing the wave of the "indolent" trope. He's dropping down to the ocean floor and he's handing you an oxygen tank because, guess what, you're going to need it. This trouble is dark, and old, and cold, and as fearsome as that mythological kraken. And it's going to come at you out of nowhere, so yes, it's best to be prepared.
In terms of psychological suspense, this is a long con with a payoff. A slow build. A seamless twist. The narrative spins into thriller territory at the three-quarter mark, where connections begin to spit and fire; relevance rising right and left. Somerville's Ben puts it best when he asserts:
"...any asshole can make something complicated, difficult, and tedious. Anyone can make something impenetrable. What's interesting is the delight someone feels when it becomes clear that it's all made sense from the start."
True enough, Patrick. True enough.
From their midst emerges Benjamin Hanson, thirty-two, and yet another well-educated misfit whose slacker tendencies managed to derail his life. Fresh from a two-year stint at a minimum security prison for an act that exemplifies the tragic laxity of his awareness, Ben has been put on course by his parents and directed to his hometown. The Wisconsin residence of a deceased uncle has been vandalized by carousing teens. He's instructed to assess the damage and prepare the house for sale. He must also find a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. And then, of course, he'll have to take a look at the contents of the laptop he stole from his business partner on his way from prison to the airport.
Ben is troubled. Clearly. Yet what sets him apart from all the other modern-day literary screw-ups is the intelligence of his author. Patrick Somerville doesn't content himself with surfing the wave of the "indolent" trope. He's dropping down to the ocean floor and he's handing you an oxygen tank because, guess what, you're going to need it. This trouble is dark, and old, and cold, and as fearsome as that mythological kraken. And it's going to come at you out of nowhere, so yes, it's best to be prepared.
In terms of psychological suspense, this is a long con with a payoff. A slow build. A seamless twist. The narrative spins into thriller territory at the three-quarter mark, where connections begin to spit and fire; relevance rising right and left. Somerville's Ben puts it best when he asserts:
"...any asshole can make something complicated, difficult, and tedious. Anyone can make something impenetrable. What's interesting is the delight someone feels when it becomes clear that it's all made sense from the start."
True enough, Patrick. True enough.
December 3, 2012
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
Sometimes I'm very glad that I've never met Chicago author Patrick Somerville, because it lets me do full critical reviews of his work without the taint of a personal bias; and that's especially welcome in the case of his newest novel, This Bright River, because it's a stunner that turned out to be one of my favorite reads of the entire year. Essentially Somerville's attempt at a Jonathan Franzen novel (or at least the first two thirds, but more on that in a bit), it tells what at first is a meandering dysfunctional-family story, about a disgraced trust-fund twentysomething who has been tasked by his rich Chicago parents to clean up a recently deceased uncle's home in the small Wisconsin town where they all grew up; and for the majority of the book this story unfolds in a highly competent if not expected way, as we get a more and more detailed look at the recent events that have made this man-child and minimum-security convict have the life he now leads, as he awkwardly reconnects with a former high-school acquaintance who is also back in their hometown as a means of running away from some sort of bad incident in her own recent past.
Ah, but then we enter the extended third act of this novel, which is where everything changes; because without giving away any plot points, it becomes clear that the incidents from the woman's recent past are both a lot more dangerous than anything else we've been looking at so far in these characters' lives, and an ongoing problem that hasn't yet been resolved*, turning This Bright River into a legitimate action thriller for its last hundred pages, a delightful thing to see after thinking that this was to be yet another character-heavy look at messed up Midwestern families. Now combine this with a growing sense of mystery about the unexplained death of this recently deceased uncle's son a decade ago, which seems in the first half to be merely a clever literary detail by Somerville but which blossoms into a main hinge of the plot by the end; and what you're left with is not just the usual academic tale of dysfunctional families but a deeply moving and thematically complex look at the black secrets all of us carry around in our lives, no matter who we are or how normal our lives seem to outsiders, a story that will have you not only thinking for days afterward but literally tearing through pages by the end, from the sheer sense of beach-read adventure that Somerville bakes into what is otherwise a pretty typical MFAer plot. A book that will easily earn a spot on our best-of-the-year lists coming in just another few weeks, this is a triumphant achievement for Somerville as an artist, especially after two previous books that I found only so-so; and if you haven't read this haunting novel for yourself yet, I urge you to pick up a copy soon.
Out of 10: 9.7
*SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!
Sometimes I'm very glad that I've never met Chicago author Patrick Somerville, because it lets me do full critical reviews of his work without the taint of a personal bias; and that's especially welcome in the case of his newest novel, This Bright River, because it's a stunner that turned out to be one of my favorite reads of the entire year. Essentially Somerville's attempt at a Jonathan Franzen novel (or at least the first two thirds, but more on that in a bit), it tells what at first is a meandering dysfunctional-family story, about a disgraced trust-fund twentysomething who has been tasked by his rich Chicago parents to clean up a recently deceased uncle's home in the small Wisconsin town where they all grew up; and for the majority of the book this story unfolds in a highly competent if not expected way, as we get a more and more detailed look at the recent events that have made this man-child and minimum-security convict have the life he now leads, as he awkwardly reconnects with a former high-school acquaintance who is also back in their hometown as a means of running away from some sort of bad incident in her own recent past.
Ah, but then we enter the extended third act of this novel, which is where everything changes; because without giving away any plot points, it becomes clear that the incidents from the woman's recent past are both a lot more dangerous than anything else we've been looking at so far in these characters' lives, and an ongoing problem that hasn't yet been resolved*, turning This Bright River into a legitimate action thriller for its last hundred pages, a delightful thing to see after thinking that this was to be yet another character-heavy look at messed up Midwestern families. Now combine this with a growing sense of mystery about the unexplained death of this recently deceased uncle's son a decade ago, which seems in the first half to be merely a clever literary detail by Somerville but which blossoms into a main hinge of the plot by the end; and what you're left with is not just the usual academic tale of dysfunctional families but a deeply moving and thematically complex look at the black secrets all of us carry around in our lives, no matter who we are or how normal our lives seem to outsiders, a story that will have you not only thinking for days afterward but literally tearing through pages by the end, from the sheer sense of beach-read adventure that Somerville bakes into what is otherwise a pretty typical MFAer plot. A book that will easily earn a spot on our best-of-the-year lists coming in just another few weeks, this is a triumphant achievement for Somerville as an artist, especially after two previous books that I found only so-so; and if you haven't read this haunting novel for yourself yet, I urge you to pick up a copy soon.
Out of 10: 9.7
*SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!
June 6, 2015
I was inclined to love this book, as The Cradle was the best book I read the year it came out, very moving, beautifully and powerfully written. So my expectations were high. . . and they were met. Gorgeous writing, terrific, right on dialogue. I am tempted to say that this is Somerville's In the Lake of the Woods, (by Tim O'Brien), or Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer, a book that takes him to a much, much darker and crazier place than ever before, though it is maybe not as ultimately dark as Lake. It IS, still, about darkness of the human spirit, of madness, of the question of evil in the world. . . and the possibility that goodness may still survive in spite of it all.
Again, as with The Cradle, family matters. Ben, the main guy, is a good person, though clearly lost in so many ways. Likeable, though, more so than Lauren, who he coincidentally meets in a return to his home town of St Helen's, (Helenville, maybe?) WI. She is even more shattered than he is and it is compelling and scary to read both of their stories. There is a single crazy event that happens late in the book, the climactic event of the book, and it is both surprising and carefully done. There are other somewhat disturbing passages, as we get a chapter in the voice of Will, Lauren's ex. Scary, disturbing. No darker character.
There are other sort of tour de force passages, such as the mushroom and drunken stoned soliloquy of Ben's cousin Wayne. I like these parts of the book; as a writer, he takes risks.
Another reason I might have been inclined to like this book is that I know the places he writes about: I live in Chicago, I lived in Madison, I have worked in areas between Milwaukee and Madison, I read John Muir when I as there as Ben does, I know the area of the UP he is talking about. This is fiction of place that appeals to me. I feel, too, that I know Ben, have been to those places he has been, been lost as he was and still may be, he feels familiar to me. I care deeply about him, and Denny, and even Lauren. . . and Ben's sister, Haley, and this small town I feel like I know well.
Wonderful, wonderful book. Takes risks at approaching madness and darkness few writers would take, and he pulls it off. Should be considered for all sorts of awards this year, for sure. The power of art to heal us. . . Somerville does this through his book, but also Ben reads Muir, philosophy, other things in his process of coming out of his malaise, his despair, his lostness. And it is not clear he is necessarily out of his hole, finally, which I also like.
Again, as with The Cradle, family matters. Ben, the main guy, is a good person, though clearly lost in so many ways. Likeable, though, more so than Lauren, who he coincidentally meets in a return to his home town of St Helen's, (Helenville, maybe?) WI. She is even more shattered than he is and it is compelling and scary to read both of their stories. There is a single crazy event that happens late in the book, the climactic event of the book, and it is both surprising and carefully done. There are other somewhat disturbing passages, as we get a chapter in the voice of Will, Lauren's ex. Scary, disturbing. No darker character.
There are other sort of tour de force passages, such as the mushroom and drunken stoned soliloquy of Ben's cousin Wayne. I like these parts of the book; as a writer, he takes risks.
Another reason I might have been inclined to like this book is that I know the places he writes about: I live in Chicago, I lived in Madison, I have worked in areas between Milwaukee and Madison, I read John Muir when I as there as Ben does, I know the area of the UP he is talking about. This is fiction of place that appeals to me. I feel, too, that I know Ben, have been to those places he has been, been lost as he was and still may be, he feels familiar to me. I care deeply about him, and Denny, and even Lauren. . . and Ben's sister, Haley, and this small town I feel like I know well.
Wonderful, wonderful book. Takes risks at approaching madness and darkness few writers would take, and he pulls it off. Should be considered for all sorts of awards this year, for sure. The power of art to heal us. . . Somerville does this through his book, but also Ben reads Muir, philosophy, other things in his process of coming out of his malaise, his despair, his lostness. And it is not clear he is necessarily out of his hole, finally, which I also like.
July 22, 2012
I eagerly anticipated this novel because I thoroughly enjoyed The Cradle. This novel is very different, though, and a much more ambitious work. The Cradle told its story in a straightforward fashion as a husband is sent out on a mission by his pregnant wife to find an ancient cradle her mother had when she was a child - and in that quest he discovers something much more vitally important to her. The story in This Bright River unfolds in a far less linear pattern. Two characters, Ben and Lauren, who knew each other in high school, return to their Wisconsin hometown in their 30s after each of them has suffered significant setbacks. But we don't get their backstory in a straightforward manner. We're given small details along the way, as the present story of their re-discovery of each other keeps circling back with revelations of partial details of their past - he ended up in prison after he exacted revenge against a friend and former business partner by burning the man's apartment down because the friend had stolen his girlfriend. She, after serving as a doctor in Africa, ran away from her husband, and is now deeply wounded and depressed from the turmoil of that relationship. Another key element of the story is the death of Ben's cousin, Wayne, who froze in the woods of his father's remote cabin in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The novel progresses in even more than a circling pattern because, as the details build-up, the back stories also go down meandering paths, the relevance of which aren't apparent until the novel starts to bring all the pieces together near the end of the book. But even then the pieces aren't perfectly reunited because that's part of the books theme - that you can't ever discover the full meaning or hidden "truth" of events from the past. There's a moment of high suspense about three-quarters of the way in when Ben and Lauren's haunted pasts converge, but then even deeper family secrets are revealed as the novel returns to its moving contemplation of what dredging up the past means and whether it's ever possible to have any of it make enough sense to help you move forward. In the early pages, the novel requires a bit of patience as you get partial mysterious details about the characters, but it richly pays off if you stick with it.
June 13, 2012
I cannot say enough good things about this book. I think I have 5 pages left. I can say that it's been over a year since I read anything I felt this invlved in, that I honestly dreaded putting the book down because I didn't want to not be reading it. I can say it's been even longer since I felt this invested in characters. I can say that reading this book made me feel a little more alive. Or, that it made me feel more. That my capacity for feeling increased as I read the book. It is a very good book, and everyone should read it.
August 4, 2012
Wow! I believe I have a new author that I absolutely adore. Patrick Somerville has a unique gift with characterization and his prose is both charming and deep.
The characters in This Bright River are profoundly real. I found myself immediately engaged with the protagonist in particular. I cared about him and I cared about those he knew and those with whom he was interested. As the secondary protagonist emerges, I similarly cared about her. I became so involved that I turned page after page well into the night and then woke early the next morning to be with them. I gained their perspective allowing me to catch the dark humor that normally escapes me both in books and in life. I felt the intensity of their emotions so deeply, that at times, I had to put the book aside for a few moments to gain perspective and to take a deep breath.
While clearly time and place are fictional, enough reality in terms of place and historical events kept the novel real for me. It's setting in a small town in Wisconsin with access to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago were within my realm of experience, as were some of the occurrences mentioned on the University of Wisconsin campus. Indeed, I was at O'Hare airport with the protagonist as I commenced with the first chapter. While not lengthy, the author's descriptive language observes the very elements of place to allow the reader to step into the character's reality.
I admit that Patrick's Somerville's novel may not be for everyone. Plot, driven by introspective characters whose ruminations regarding the reality in which they find themselves and the meaning of their lives, create the narrative. Falling at times into a stream of conscious style, filled with digression, meandering thoughts, and considered possibilities, the author may lose some who just want to get on with the story. Also, the consciousness varies by character, sometimes short and partially evolved thoughts and other times clear and distinctive explorations. For me, the intelligence of the writing and the dedication to truth of his characters, even when thoughts would become disjointed or became rambling, provided a sense of realism and only increased my connection with the story and with those involved. Reading this book added to my own contemplation about family, love, and daily existence. This Bright River in some ways became a philosophical journey as well as a brilliant experience reading a wonderfully developed novel with strong storyline filled with compassion for people and insight in relation to varied choices in lifestyle and paths followed.
I thoroughly enjoyed This Bright River. I will definitely read more from this author. In fact, after a short reverie upon completing this novel, I immediately ordered Patrick Somerville's other novel The Cradle.
The characters in This Bright River are profoundly real. I found myself immediately engaged with the protagonist in particular. I cared about him and I cared about those he knew and those with whom he was interested. As the secondary protagonist emerges, I similarly cared about her. I became so involved that I turned page after page well into the night and then woke early the next morning to be with them. I gained their perspective allowing me to catch the dark humor that normally escapes me both in books and in life. I felt the intensity of their emotions so deeply, that at times, I had to put the book aside for a few moments to gain perspective and to take a deep breath.
While clearly time and place are fictional, enough reality in terms of place and historical events kept the novel real for me. It's setting in a small town in Wisconsin with access to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago were within my realm of experience, as were some of the occurrences mentioned on the University of Wisconsin campus. Indeed, I was at O'Hare airport with the protagonist as I commenced with the first chapter. While not lengthy, the author's descriptive language observes the very elements of place to allow the reader to step into the character's reality.
I admit that Patrick's Somerville's novel may not be for everyone. Plot, driven by introspective characters whose ruminations regarding the reality in which they find themselves and the meaning of their lives, create the narrative. Falling at times into a stream of conscious style, filled with digression, meandering thoughts, and considered possibilities, the author may lose some who just want to get on with the story. Also, the consciousness varies by character, sometimes short and partially evolved thoughts and other times clear and distinctive explorations. For me, the intelligence of the writing and the dedication to truth of his characters, even when thoughts would become disjointed or became rambling, provided a sense of realism and only increased my connection with the story and with those involved. Reading this book added to my own contemplation about family, love, and daily existence. This Bright River in some ways became a philosophical journey as well as a brilliant experience reading a wonderfully developed novel with strong storyline filled with compassion for people and insight in relation to varied choices in lifestyle and paths followed.
I thoroughly enjoyed This Bright River. I will definitely read more from this author. In fact, after a short reverie upon completing this novel, I immediately ordered Patrick Somerville's other novel The Cradle.
June 25, 2012
4.5+ stars. Holy crap, this was a great book. Something about loveable loser protagonist Ben and prickly also vaguely loser-ish Lauren, not to mention the awe-inspiring, perfect prose, all these things combined to make a ridiculously engaging, delicious book. The only reason this didn’t get a full five stars is there is a plot turn late in the book that took me totally by surprise but not in a good way. Looking back, it wasn’t actually a surprise but I didn’t 100% buy into the wrap-up, family secret revelation, etc. Oddly the “big thing” felt less powerful than the quieter parts of the story. Nonetheless this is a fantastic book, astoundingly written, and I highly recommend it.
July 20, 2012
There are very few books which I do not finish but this one was close. I struggled to get thru it. Found it rambling and confusing and boring. The author could have cut it by 200 pages and maybe then it would have been more bearable. I hate to give bad reviews because I appreciate the time and energy the author spent writing the book but I can't find anything good to say about it.
September 14, 2012
What did I just read? Why did I read this? It's an overlong, tedious, obtuse piece of work. The shifting narratives make it almost impossible to read. Somerville confuses things by having two stories of the same type, why not just have one? Why was there such drama? And why was this 450 pages long, and didn't actually manage to reveal anything?
There's the screw-up pothead Ben. He was tried for arson for a completely ridiculous reason. His parents are somehow able to put him in a white collar prison, but not actually mount a decent defense for what was, essentially, a screw-up. After he's released and is drifting, his father asks him to put together the house of his uncle Denny, who's dead. There's too, a secret about how his cousin Wayne, Denny's son, died. He was, if anything, an even bigger screw up than Ben. Then there's Lauren. Ben's interested, but she's 'Troubled' which basically translates into 'vacillating bitch'. She's had a husband who has somehow turned psycho. She's been, apparently, traumatized enough to almost die (out of depression? stress) in a stadium. But, no one thinks she needs to go into therapy. She blows hot and cold with Ben. He persists. Suddenly, there's the husband who's pursuing Lauren because he's lost some precious brain matter (all of a sudden, after like four years). Oh and there's Haley, who is Ben's sister. She's the one person in the book who's not screwed up. Surprise! She's screwed up too.
There are four total narrative shifts. A random person who ends the prologue bludgeoned to the head, Ben, Lauren and one chapter of Will (Lauren's psycho ex-husband). The prologue guy's narration doesn't matter. He doesn't come back, we never get to know him as a character. Ben's narration is coherent, if a little out there. Will is psycho, so his stream-of-consciousness narration is acceptable. It's Lauren, who, for me, is the absolute misfire. She never rings true. There's a bit of her when she's young and she's sharing a project with Ben. She sounds exactly the same as she does fifteen (?) years later. Did she never grow up? She sees Ben after a long time, and is a nasty piece of work. I wonder what Ben has done, and it turns out that there's no reason at all. That's the author's way of telling us that this lady is troubled.
I've had it with these literary troubled women. Especially when they're written a way that makes no sense. It's made out that Lauren's an abused woman, but she clears out pretty quick when she realizes that he used drugs on her and raped her. What bothered me, is not that she ran from him. It's that she never tells anyone. For four years. Even when she knows that Will is screwed up enough to serial-rape his female colleagues and his patients too (he's a doctor at a refugee camp when she meets him). He's caused at least one death, and she's aware of that. What the hell was she thinking? Why does this woman get called delightful? Ben calls her out at one point, but, it's skated over and then there's no mention of it and Lauren comes out of it smelling of sunshine and daisies.
Lauren has a monologue that lasts for two chapters. That basically broke the book for me. She tells Ben about her life with the psycho. But she hides. She fudges. She plays coy. It doesn't sound like a tell-all. Ben understands, and I do too, but my point is that it's doesn't feel real. It reads like a bad storyteller telling a made-up tale, complete with cliffhangers. Then there is Ben's reaction to that. He walks off, and thinks of his dead cousin. When he comes back, Lauren and he have an overlong, obtuse conversation about nothing at all in a swimming pool. The only purpose of that was to make him take his cell-phone into the pool and make it stop working. This is a plot point that becomes relevant later. The ex-husband had the most relatable characterization. I believed he was unhinged. I did not believe the motivations of the 'normal' people.
The ending has a mind-boggling amount of plot twists. We're talking now of Lauren and now of Will. Ha! Fooled you! We're actually talking about Wayne! And Haley! And did you know that there was something not right about Ben's father? Let's throw in some Jeremy (who's so far only been talked about) as well! The narration is manipulated so that we never know how Ben got to the truth about his cousin. Ben randomly connects known facts A, B & C with unrevealed or randomly pulled-from-the-ass letters D through Z, and voila! mystery solved.
What was this book, exactly? It maybe that Somerville meant it to be a character study cum mystery cum family drama. I think it's a mess. A pity Janet Maslin didn't pay attention to a teeny tiny bit at the end where we come to know who the character with the head injury is. I don't blame her, by then I would've welcomed it if the whole lot of them drowned in this Bright River. But, that oversight gave Somerville the higher ground, while, I think Maslin was actually too kind in her review.
There's the screw-up pothead Ben. He was tried for arson for a completely ridiculous reason. His parents are somehow able to put him in a white collar prison, but not actually mount a decent defense for what was, essentially, a screw-up. After he's released and is drifting, his father asks him to put together the house of his uncle Denny, who's dead. There's too, a secret about how his cousin Wayne, Denny's son, died. He was, if anything, an even bigger screw up than Ben. Then there's Lauren. Ben's interested, but she's 'Troubled' which basically translates into 'vacillating bitch'. She's had a husband who has somehow turned psycho. She's been, apparently, traumatized enough to almost die (out of depression? stress) in a stadium. But, no one thinks she needs to go into therapy. She blows hot and cold with Ben. He persists. Suddenly, there's the husband who's pursuing Lauren because he's lost some precious brain matter (all of a sudden, after like four years). Oh and there's Haley, who is Ben's sister. She's the one person in the book who's not screwed up. Surprise! She's screwed up too.
There are four total narrative shifts. A random person who ends the prologue bludgeoned to the head, Ben, Lauren and one chapter of Will (Lauren's psycho ex-husband). The prologue guy's narration doesn't matter. He doesn't come back, we never get to know him as a character. Ben's narration is coherent, if a little out there. Will is psycho, so his stream-of-consciousness narration is acceptable. It's Lauren, who, for me, is the absolute misfire. She never rings true. There's a bit of her when she's young and she's sharing a project with Ben. She sounds exactly the same as she does fifteen (?) years later. Did she never grow up? She sees Ben after a long time, and is a nasty piece of work. I wonder what Ben has done, and it turns out that there's no reason at all. That's the author's way of telling us that this lady is troubled.
I've had it with these literary troubled women. Especially when they're written a way that makes no sense. It's made out that Lauren's an abused woman, but she clears out pretty quick when she realizes that he used drugs on her and raped her. What bothered me, is not that she ran from him. It's that she never tells anyone. For four years. Even when she knows that Will is screwed up enough to serial-rape his female colleagues and his patients too (he's a doctor at a refugee camp when she meets him). He's caused at least one death, and she's aware of that. What the hell was she thinking? Why does this woman get called delightful? Ben calls her out at one point, but, it's skated over and then there's no mention of it and Lauren comes out of it smelling of sunshine and daisies.
Lauren has a monologue that lasts for two chapters. That basically broke the book for me. She tells Ben about her life with the psycho. But she hides. She fudges. She plays coy. It doesn't sound like a tell-all. Ben understands, and I do too, but my point is that it's doesn't feel real. It reads like a bad storyteller telling a made-up tale, complete with cliffhangers. Then there is Ben's reaction to that. He walks off, and thinks of his dead cousin. When he comes back, Lauren and he have an overlong, obtuse conversation about nothing at all in a swimming pool. The only purpose of that was to make him take his cell-phone into the pool and make it stop working. This is a plot point that becomes relevant later. The ex-husband had the most relatable characterization. I believed he was unhinged. I did not believe the motivations of the 'normal' people.
The ending has a mind-boggling amount of plot twists. We're talking now of Lauren and now of Will. Ha! Fooled you! We're actually talking about Wayne! And Haley! And did you know that there was something not right about Ben's father? Let's throw in some Jeremy (who's so far only been talked about) as well! The narration is manipulated so that we never know how Ben got to the truth about his cousin. Ben randomly connects known facts A, B & C with unrevealed or randomly pulled-from-the-ass letters D through Z, and voila! mystery solved.
What was this book, exactly? It maybe that Somerville meant it to be a character study cum mystery cum family drama. I think it's a mess. A pity Janet Maslin didn't pay attention to a teeny tiny bit at the end where we come to know who the character with the head injury is. I don't blame her, by then I would've welcomed it if the whole lot of them drowned in this Bright River. But, that oversight gave Somerville the higher ground, while, I think Maslin was actually too kind in her review.
May 11, 2012
I loved the writer's voice - or should I say the voices of his characters? They were incredibly realistic, flawed in a believable and beautiful way.
July 5, 2017
NOTE: After you read this novel, you should read this account by the author of how badly Janet Maslin of the NYT misread it, likely torpedoing its reputation and commercial potential.
My review for this novel was first published by The New York Journal of Books in 2012. I reproduce it here:
Patrick Somerville’s first novel was a charming little fable about a man dispatched by his pregnant wife to retrieve her stolen childhood cradle before their baby’s birth. Weighing in at less than 200 pages, The Cradle was one of 2009’s great finds, its brevity turning its potentially sappy premise into something almost mythical.
This Bright River, in contrast, is a shaggy dog story, not sloppy so much as roomy. This time around, Mr. Somerville is willing to let his characters ruminate and his prose digress in ways the compactness of The Cradle wouldn’t allow.
It is a novel that could easily lose a third without sacrificing anything in story, but would lose something in storytelling—a semantic distinction but one the author likely finds very important.
“Everybody loves stories,” one character muses, and the people in This Bright River love telling them. Their stories are long-winded, they’re circuitous, and they spend time preparing to tell them (one chapter is entitled, “Very Boring Story I Can’t Quite Bring Myself to Tell Because of How Boring It Is”).
Mr. Somerville throws a lot of balls in the air, but he ultimately delivers a story that’s every bit as moving as The Cradle.
Just how many storylines are there?
The book jacket summary goes something like this: Ben Hanson is 32 and fresh out of jail (for “non-lethal arson”). He has moved back into his Uncle Denny’s house following the man’s death, with instructions from his parents to get it into shape so they can sell it. He has a mind for puzzles, one of which was the genesis for a computer game founded by his friend, a venture he is now squarely on the outside of.
While living back in his hometown, he discovers an old classmate, Lauren Sheehan, still lives there. Lauren comes with baggage of her own (failed marriage, fractious relationship with parents, sketchy doings overseas, etc.) though now she generally keeps to herself, working for the local veterinarian and studying to go back to school. Ben, the driftless ex-con, and Lauren, the damaged woman who doesn’t get too close to anyone, forge a tenuous relationship.
That’s one.
The novel opens a decade earlier with a dialogue between two people in a Madison bar. They share a drink. One man admires the other’s jacket. They go outside to smoke. And then one clubs the other over the head and stuffs him in a trunk.
That cryptic scene forms a second subplot, one that will linger over the remainder of the book.
And what happened to Ben’s cousin (Denny’s son) Wayne while Ben and Lauren were working on their high school science project together? The story goes that Wayne drove up to his father’s cabin way up the Bright River in the dead of winter, either overdosed or suffered a schizophrenic break, and couldn’t make it back before freezing to death. But Ben, who deals in puzzles, knows there’s more to that story, one that his family refuses to divulge.
So that makes three plot strands so far—a tentative romance, a decade-old murder mystery, and an old-fashioned ghost story—and there are still others left for readers to discover. They may be frustrated with the leisurely pace of the first half and with Mr. Somerville’s apparent lack of focus if they’re not already fatigued by all the talking these people do.
The chapters narrated by Lauren seem less urgent than those narrated by Ben, less tied to his attempts at redemption and the cloud of grief still hanging over the Hansons since Wayne’s death, and there’s narration by a third character, one who will factor into the novel’s final act, that seems less relevant still.
But those concerns should abate in the second half, when This Bright River does an about-face and turns into a tense philosophical thriller.
Mr. Somerville pays off on all the disparate threads, and though the climactic scene is a touch ham-fisted, the truth regarding that violent prologue is both stunningly deployed and heartbreaking.
The novel’s centerpiece is an extended conversation between 17-year-old Ben and college-aged Wayne, Wayne playing the cool cousin by buying Ben drinks and introducing him to mushrooms.
He begins by telling Ben about a 16th-century Spanish monk named Bartolome de Las Casas, who documented the atrocities perpetrated by the conquistadores against the West Indian natives, the scope and casualness of the violence beyond anything we can now comprehend. “The soundtrack of life here in America is those screams,” he tells Ben.
But Wayne’s history lesson eventually wends its way toward a drunken disquisition on the evil inherent in all of us, and how it may be our birthright:
“Families are ostensibly valuable units of organization because the world’s a tough place . . . it can be bad out there, and so if you want to stay safe, if there’s a group of you and you want to stay safe . . . what you should do in this little group is just be sure you all value one another more than you value anything or anyone else in this world, right? And if everyone agrees to that guiding principle and does that, then chances are you’ll all do well because, first off, you’ll never be working at cross-purposes with the people near you . . . it’s effective because you’ve all got one another’s back in a family, right?
“So that means,” Wayne continues, “someone from the outside world comes in and tries to hurt somebody, everyone else is all over it because they’re all tuned in and watching one another and the hurt doesn’t happen, it gets averted, it gets blocked. Then there’s the whole other thing about revenge. . . . What do you think about revenge? In principle. As a principle for guiding behavior, I mean.”
This scene, a nearly 20-page exchange, is a small masterpiece (one that resonates deeper on second read), really the entire novel in miniature. It strikes on the prevailing theme of the book: We are all flowing in our own little rivers.
But when the tide turns rough and you are faced with difficult choices, on which side and with whom are you going to stand? Will you succumb to the evil tendencies within you or rise above them? All the characters in This Bright River have to confront that question; by the end, Ben has his answer.
Mr. Somerville knows his book is not airtight; it has some rough edges, and it’s in the rough edges that he succeeds. It is storytelling for the pure pleasure of storytelling.
He has given us first in The Cradle and now in This Bright River two different ways of approaching the novel, and if it is a preview of this still-young author’s literary trajectory, there is no telling where he will go next.
My review for this novel was first published by The New York Journal of Books in 2012. I reproduce it here:
Patrick Somerville’s first novel was a charming little fable about a man dispatched by his pregnant wife to retrieve her stolen childhood cradle before their baby’s birth. Weighing in at less than 200 pages, The Cradle was one of 2009’s great finds, its brevity turning its potentially sappy premise into something almost mythical.
This Bright River, in contrast, is a shaggy dog story, not sloppy so much as roomy. This time around, Mr. Somerville is willing to let his characters ruminate and his prose digress in ways the compactness of The Cradle wouldn’t allow.
It is a novel that could easily lose a third without sacrificing anything in story, but would lose something in storytelling—a semantic distinction but one the author likely finds very important.
“Everybody loves stories,” one character muses, and the people in This Bright River love telling them. Their stories are long-winded, they’re circuitous, and they spend time preparing to tell them (one chapter is entitled, “Very Boring Story I Can’t Quite Bring Myself to Tell Because of How Boring It Is”).
Mr. Somerville throws a lot of balls in the air, but he ultimately delivers a story that’s every bit as moving as The Cradle.
Just how many storylines are there?
The book jacket summary goes something like this: Ben Hanson is 32 and fresh out of jail (for “non-lethal arson”). He has moved back into his Uncle Denny’s house following the man’s death, with instructions from his parents to get it into shape so they can sell it. He has a mind for puzzles, one of which was the genesis for a computer game founded by his friend, a venture he is now squarely on the outside of.
While living back in his hometown, he discovers an old classmate, Lauren Sheehan, still lives there. Lauren comes with baggage of her own (failed marriage, fractious relationship with parents, sketchy doings overseas, etc.) though now she generally keeps to herself, working for the local veterinarian and studying to go back to school. Ben, the driftless ex-con, and Lauren, the damaged woman who doesn’t get too close to anyone, forge a tenuous relationship.
That’s one.
The novel opens a decade earlier with a dialogue between two people in a Madison bar. They share a drink. One man admires the other’s jacket. They go outside to smoke. And then one clubs the other over the head and stuffs him in a trunk.
That cryptic scene forms a second subplot, one that will linger over the remainder of the book.
And what happened to Ben’s cousin (Denny’s son) Wayne while Ben and Lauren were working on their high school science project together? The story goes that Wayne drove up to his father’s cabin way up the Bright River in the dead of winter, either overdosed or suffered a schizophrenic break, and couldn’t make it back before freezing to death. But Ben, who deals in puzzles, knows there’s more to that story, one that his family refuses to divulge.
So that makes three plot strands so far—a tentative romance, a decade-old murder mystery, and an old-fashioned ghost story—and there are still others left for readers to discover. They may be frustrated with the leisurely pace of the first half and with Mr. Somerville’s apparent lack of focus if they’re not already fatigued by all the talking these people do.
The chapters narrated by Lauren seem less urgent than those narrated by Ben, less tied to his attempts at redemption and the cloud of grief still hanging over the Hansons since Wayne’s death, and there’s narration by a third character, one who will factor into the novel’s final act, that seems less relevant still.
But those concerns should abate in the second half, when This Bright River does an about-face and turns into a tense philosophical thriller.
Mr. Somerville pays off on all the disparate threads, and though the climactic scene is a touch ham-fisted, the truth regarding that violent prologue is both stunningly deployed and heartbreaking.
The novel’s centerpiece is an extended conversation between 17-year-old Ben and college-aged Wayne, Wayne playing the cool cousin by buying Ben drinks and introducing him to mushrooms.
He begins by telling Ben about a 16th-century Spanish monk named Bartolome de Las Casas, who documented the atrocities perpetrated by the conquistadores against the West Indian natives, the scope and casualness of the violence beyond anything we can now comprehend. “The soundtrack of life here in America is those screams,” he tells Ben.
But Wayne’s history lesson eventually wends its way toward a drunken disquisition on the evil inherent in all of us, and how it may be our birthright:
“Families are ostensibly valuable units of organization because the world’s a tough place . . . it can be bad out there, and so if you want to stay safe, if there’s a group of you and you want to stay safe . . . what you should do in this little group is just be sure you all value one another more than you value anything or anyone else in this world, right? And if everyone agrees to that guiding principle and does that, then chances are you’ll all do well because, first off, you’ll never be working at cross-purposes with the people near you . . . it’s effective because you’ve all got one another’s back in a family, right?
“So that means,” Wayne continues, “someone from the outside world comes in and tries to hurt somebody, everyone else is all over it because they’re all tuned in and watching one another and the hurt doesn’t happen, it gets averted, it gets blocked. Then there’s the whole other thing about revenge. . . . What do you think about revenge? In principle. As a principle for guiding behavior, I mean.”
This scene, a nearly 20-page exchange, is a small masterpiece (one that resonates deeper on second read), really the entire novel in miniature. It strikes on the prevailing theme of the book: We are all flowing in our own little rivers.
But when the tide turns rough and you are faced with difficult choices, on which side and with whom are you going to stand? Will you succumb to the evil tendencies within you or rise above them? All the characters in This Bright River have to confront that question; by the end, Ben has his answer.
Mr. Somerville knows his book is not airtight; it has some rough edges, and it’s in the rough edges that he succeeds. It is storytelling for the pure pleasure of storytelling.
He has given us first in The Cradle and now in This Bright River two different ways of approaching the novel, and if it is a preview of this still-young author’s literary trajectory, there is no telling where he will go next.
July 9, 2012
What a wild weird ride this book is.
This Bright River tells the respective stories of Ben (a sort of hapless guy who has returned home to Wisconsin after a brief stint in prison) and Lauren (a haunted woman who is also returning to her home town) as well as what happens when they come together. It's all prefaced by a prologue (which you may have heard about here -- though don't read this unless you've finished the book) which hooked me initially and then plagued me throughout (thank God it all comes together at the end).
More than anything I loved the structure of the novel. It, like the river of its title, is meandering, at times still and contemplative, and other times violent.
I was happily confused for much of the novel...content to just keep moving. And, again, the end clarifies almost every question I had. The others I may just have to email Ben about :)
This Bright River tells the respective stories of Ben (a sort of hapless guy who has returned home to Wisconsin after a brief stint in prison) and Lauren (a haunted woman who is also returning to her home town) as well as what happens when they come together. It's all prefaced by a prologue (which you may have heard about here -- though don't read this unless you've finished the book) which hooked me initially and then plagued me throughout (thank God it all comes together at the end).
More than anything I loved the structure of the novel. It, like the river of its title, is meandering, at times still and contemplative, and other times violent.
I was happily confused for much of the novel...content to just keep moving. And, again, the end clarifies almost every question I had. The others I may just have to email Ben about :)
June 27, 2012
A good memoir of sorts of a few characters pursuit of happiness.
There was some nice and poignant moments that readers could relate to.
This started off well and then drifted into more flat land with no taking off, I think it would have been more captivating if it was shortened. There seemed to be no real middle or end no drive to the story to keep you in the story. As I came back to the novel and started picking up where I left off from I gradually started to have a disdain for the characters and didn't care anymore for the story. This story could appeal to many readers but it lost my intrigue as time passed by.
There was some nice and poignant moments that readers could relate to.
This started off well and then drifted into more flat land with no taking off, I think it would have been more captivating if it was shortened. There seemed to be no real middle or end no drive to the story to keep you in the story. As I came back to the novel and started picking up where I left off from I gradually started to have a disdain for the characters and didn't care anymore for the story. This story could appeal to many readers but it lost my intrigue as time passed by.
August 4, 2012
I was truly disappointed in This Bright River. All of the characters were profoundly unhappy and dysfunctional, and the dialog among them was boring and pointless. I cannot figure out what the good reviews are so pumped about. I'd love to heard from my Goodreads friends who liked this book. What am I missing?
July 9, 2013
I mainly liked the Wisconsin setting and all the references to places I know. A messed up murder mystery/family drama.
June 29, 2012
This is about thirty-something Ben, who returns to his childhood town to do up his deceased uncle's house with the intention to sell it. He meets a former class mate, Lauren, and they hook up together. Both of them have skeletons in their cupboards and in Lauren's case, her past comes back to her with a vengeance. There are a few thrilling moments when both their lives are in danger.
I had a mixed reading experience with this book. Sometimes I found the story compelling and I wanted to read on, while at other times I was bored.
I enjoyed reading about Ben arriving in his childhood town, getting to know the place (again) and the people. But there were memories that I didn’t care about intermixed with this story. Later on in the book, it becomes a thriller for a while, which was all rather exciting.
As the book is told by both Ben and Lauren, the perspective shifts every so often, which I like. I love reading events and situations from different perspectives or, like in this case, the story often continued through the alternating narrators.
It was clear from the moment Lauren joined the narrative, that she would be involved with Ben in some way or another. At first, their lives were very much separate and when they did meet, Lauren showed no interest in Ben whatsoever. So the foreshadowing made me curious to see how they would end up in the same story line.
Most loose ends are tight up at the end of the story and overall, I enjoyed it. Both Ben and Lauren have a past that comes to haunt them, and when that happens, the book certainly gains pace and becomes quite compelling.
I had a mixed reading experience with this book. Sometimes I found the story compelling and I wanted to read on, while at other times I was bored.
I enjoyed reading about Ben arriving in his childhood town, getting to know the place (again) and the people. But there were memories that I didn’t care about intermixed with this story. Later on in the book, it becomes a thriller for a while, which was all rather exciting.
As the book is told by both Ben and Lauren, the perspective shifts every so often, which I like. I love reading events and situations from different perspectives or, like in this case, the story often continued through the alternating narrators.
It was clear from the moment Lauren joined the narrative, that she would be involved with Ben in some way or another. At first, their lives were very much separate and when they did meet, Lauren showed no interest in Ben whatsoever. So the foreshadowing made me curious to see how they would end up in the same story line.
Most loose ends are tight up at the end of the story and overall, I enjoyed it. Both Ben and Lauren have a past that comes to haunt them, and when that happens, the book certainly gains pace and becomes quite compelling.
September 28, 2012
This Bright River is a family novel, a suspense/mystery novel, and a love story all in one. It is a compelling read with a great sense of place (St. Helens, WI, and Michigan's Upper Peninsula). It is different from Somerville's previous novel, The Cradle: it is longer, it has multiple narrators, the reader is sometimes unsure of the narrators' reliability.
The story centers around two characters. Thirty-two-year-old Ben Hanson has returned to his small town in order to clean up and sell his uncle's house on behalf of his parents; he is smart, but has been a drifter and a somewhat-accidental criminal. He is preoccupied with his cousin Wayne's death at his uncle's cabin in the woods, many years ago. Lauren, a classmate of Ben's from high school, has also returned to their small town after being away for a long time (college, medical school, volunteering in Chad, a bad marriage to another doctor). She is standoffish, but eventually opens up to Ben. Her narrative is, at times, somewhat rambling and disjointed, and the reader questions whether her ex-husband is dangerous or whether she is simply unstable.
The author may cause some uncertainty for readers, but rest assured, he maintains control of the story's many threads, and ties everything together in the end.
Quotes:
There is no answer. And it was a though all of us had been passing burdens to one another in the hope that there was. (Ben, 440)
...I didn't understand...how one person can become another, how the seeds are in us to be almost anything. (Lauren, 444)
The story centers around two characters. Thirty-two-year-old Ben Hanson has returned to his small town in order to clean up and sell his uncle's house on behalf of his parents; he is smart, but has been a drifter and a somewhat-accidental criminal. He is preoccupied with his cousin Wayne's death at his uncle's cabin in the woods, many years ago. Lauren, a classmate of Ben's from high school, has also returned to their small town after being away for a long time (college, medical school, volunteering in Chad, a bad marriage to another doctor). She is standoffish, but eventually opens up to Ben. Her narrative is, at times, somewhat rambling and disjointed, and the reader questions whether her ex-husband is dangerous or whether she is simply unstable.
The author may cause some uncertainty for readers, but rest assured, he maintains control of the story's many threads, and ties everything together in the end.
Quotes:
There is no answer. And it was a though all of us had been passing burdens to one another in the hope that there was. (Ben, 440)
...I didn't understand...how one person can become another, how the seeds are in us to be almost anything. (Lauren, 444)
June 17, 2012
Ben Hanson's life reached rock bottom when he made some bad decisions and, thus, ended up in jail.
Lauren Sheehan's life as a medical doctor came to a halt after a lot of violent happenings abroad.
Now, both Ben and Lauren are back in St. Helen's, Wisconsin. Ben is here to take care of closing up his uncle's house and getting it sold. Lauren is in St. Helen's because it's the safest place she knows; away from friendships, career and romance. This is the town that Ben and Lauren had grown up in and gone to school.
Ben's family seems to be fractured and they are still trying to figure out about his cousin's mysterious death a decade earlier. Lauren is hiding from a world that brought her so much heartache. Now their path's have intersected and they are getting to know one another and is this what they need? They do need someone to help them in finding their way back to the human race and how to deal with all of what happened to them in life.
This is a love story with compelling family drama included. How to Ben and Laura find their way once again to some happiness in their lives?
Now, I wish to thank Goodreads First Reads for granting me the opportunity to read this book. I won this in one of the Goodreads Giveaways. And, thank you too Mr. Somerville for a great read. I know the public will enjoy this book.
Lauren Sheehan's life as a medical doctor came to a halt after a lot of violent happenings abroad.
Now, both Ben and Lauren are back in St. Helen's, Wisconsin. Ben is here to take care of closing up his uncle's house and getting it sold. Lauren is in St. Helen's because it's the safest place she knows; away from friendships, career and romance. This is the town that Ben and Lauren had grown up in and gone to school.
Ben's family seems to be fractured and they are still trying to figure out about his cousin's mysterious death a decade earlier. Lauren is hiding from a world that brought her so much heartache. Now their path's have intersected and they are getting to know one another and is this what they need? They do need someone to help them in finding their way back to the human race and how to deal with all of what happened to them in life.
This is a love story with compelling family drama included. How to Ben and Laura find their way once again to some happiness in their lives?
Now, I wish to thank Goodreads First Reads for granting me the opportunity to read this book. I won this in one of the Goodreads Giveaways. And, thank you too Mr. Somerville for a great read. I know the public will enjoy this book.
July 25, 2012
The book was not perfect, and because it involves puzzling through some past events until they make sense I kept thinking, afterward, about whether this could have happened, really, or whether it would have been more like that. And that's why the book was amazing--it engaged me so fully in the story that I kept thinking though the plot lines from the two main characters' points of view and going back into the book, after I finished it, to see how far back it had been foretold.
Beyond the plot, though, the writing is just awesome. I wrote down three pages of favorite paragraphs before I returned the book to the library for future pleasure. It's stream of consciousness at times, and there is one section, a rant from the brain of a character who we know from the start has died (Wayne) that was unbearable for me to read in its deranged gruesomeness, but everything else flowed, for me, no matter how long the passage. And the dialogue was just great.
Beyond the plot, though, the writing is just awesome. I wrote down three pages of favorite paragraphs before I returned the book to the library for future pleasure. It's stream of consciousness at times, and there is one section, a rant from the brain of a character who we know from the start has died (Wayne) that was unbearable for me to read in its deranged gruesomeness, but everything else flowed, for me, no matter how long the passage. And the dialogue was just great.
August 22, 2012
I started out loving it, but gradually turned against this book. In the end I feel disappointed and annoyed. The good things--dialogue, characters, and humor--were outweighed by the bad. It got increasingly cryptic and convuluted as it went on. I still don't understand certain key things, such as what exactly happened to Lauren at the hands of Will. Can anyone tell me? Too much violence at the end. Not that I am intrinsically against that, but it just never made sense that any of the characters would commit such acts. I was particularly frustrated by long interior monologues in the middle of action scenes.
July 2, 2012
Part mystery, part physiological thriller, part stream of consciousness, this book did keep me turning pages if only to find out how things ultimately tie together. The first chapter is a seemingly random stand-alone that makes sense later. Then you have 50-60 pages of the same narrator, then someone else jumps in to narrate. Eventually it ties together, but the whole thing is very dark and almost every character has depression problems (or worse).
abandoned
May 30, 2014Only the third book I've ever abandoned. I could only make it about 25 pages. The prose was so so so bad -- it was like reading something by a snarky blogger, but in novel form. Attempts at being clever on every page, and awkward modern references to stuff like McDonalds, Quiznos, PDFs, and INXS (which just doesn't sit right with me in novels).
Maybe it's a little unfair as I just got done with a book by a prose master in Gabriel García Márquez, but this seemed too ameteurish to continue.
Maybe it's a little unfair as I just got done with a book by a prose master in Gabriel García Márquez, but this seemed too ameteurish to continue.
September 21, 2016
A novel of love, thoughts and breadth...something unexpected. I haven't flown through a book this fast in a while, but it was so damn smart and readable.
The characters were very well drawn, even minor ones. In one of my updates I said this book was like a conversation, and I stand by that.
The author seems to be having a conversation with the reader in such a way that I cannot wait to read more of his work.
The characters were very well drawn, even minor ones. In one of my updates I said this book was like a conversation, and I stand by that.
The author seems to be having a conversation with the reader in such a way that I cannot wait to read more of his work.
July 15, 2012
Sommerville is a fine prose writer but this novel is terribly plotted. It never decides whether it wants to be a novel of ideas, a character portrait, or, as the book jacket would tell you a "family drama." Because it dips its toes in so much, nothing sticks and everything feels simultaneously abrupt and prolonged.
August 20, 2012
Not sure what to think of this one. It started out really great but got bogged down in some really long abstract monologues, the characters' motivations were kept cryptic, and there were so many plots twist right near the end that it was too much. But there was a lot of intelligence, humor, philosophy, etc. and good writing along the way as well.
October 4, 2012
I am 2/3 through it and finding it a struggle. I give it credit for holding my interest in the outcome. However, I can't forgive an author (and the editors?) who allow the use of incorrect grammar in the writing.
April 23, 2012
I'm lucky I got to read this.
July 5, 2012
Here's my review:
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/books/...
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/books/...
August 20, 2012
I found this to be a great beach/vacation read. A well written story that keeps you guessing!
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