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The Final Case
A provocative new novel from the best-selling author of Snow Falling on Cedars--a moving father-son story that is also a taut courtroom drama and a bold examination of privilege, power, and how to live a meaningful life.
A girl dies one late, rainy night a few feet from the back door of her home. The girl, Abeba, was born in Ethiopia. Her adoptive parents, Delvin and Betsy Harvey--conservative, white fundamentalist Christians--are charged with her murder.
Royal, a Seattle criminal attorney in the last days of his long career, takes Betsy Harvey’s case. An octogenarian without a driver’s license, he leans on his son--the novel’s narrator--as he prepares for trial.
So begins The Final Case, a bracing, astute, and deeply affecting examination of justice and injustice--and familial love. David Guterson’s first courtroom drama since Snow Falling on Cedars, it is his most compelling and heartfelt novel to date.
246 pages, Hardcover
First published January 11, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 596 reviews
October 21, 2021
By the author of Snow Falling on Cedars. Please let me sum up my thoughts on this book: word salad, word salad, word salad, word salad, brief interval of interesting story-telling, word salad, word salad, word salad, the end.
April 4, 2023
4.5 stars: “The Final Case” by David Guterson is a mesmerizing read about a writer who accompanies his attorney father while the dad defends a woman from a heinous crime.
In Guterson’s author’s note, he states that there was a trial in Skagit County, Washington where an adopted girl died of hypothermia and her adoptive parents were tried in court. The girl was from Ethiopia and the adoptive parents had strict religious convictions on child-rearing. He states that there are parallels to this case that is written in this entirely work of fiction.
The unnamed narrator is a writer who has given up on fiction writing or is in hiatus. His father, Royal, is an octogenarian who still takes pro-bono cases. Royal is asked to defend the mother of the deceased girl. The story is about Royal, his final case; but it’s also about Royal as a man of integrity, a man who could be Atticus Finch’s protégé. Guterson reveals the work and dedication Royal has for his vocation.
Guterson writes some testimony from the trial. The first three quarters of the novel is about the trial. It’s a painful read, but an important illumination. For, Guterson illuminates problems in adoption laws. Parents can adopt a child, even though their child-rearing involved beatings and major punitive techniques. One can beat their child in the name of religion. The constitutional rights of parents supersede the rights of children from other countries. The Fourteenth Amendment bars questions that could vet out abuse in international adoptions.
After the trial though, the rhythm of the novel abruptly changes. Subjects like tea, socialism and racist white guys ramble along. From the title, I guessed it’s about the narrator’s father, but the swift change in cadence and subject left me scratching my head.
Nonetheless, I found this story to be important. Guterson is in top form as a literary author. I have always enjoyed his prose. I will remember this story. That alone is worth the 5 stars, even given the strange ending.
In Guterson’s author’s note, he states that there was a trial in Skagit County, Washington where an adopted girl died of hypothermia and her adoptive parents were tried in court. The girl was from Ethiopia and the adoptive parents had strict religious convictions on child-rearing. He states that there are parallels to this case that is written in this entirely work of fiction.
The unnamed narrator is a writer who has given up on fiction writing or is in hiatus. His father, Royal, is an octogenarian who still takes pro-bono cases. Royal is asked to defend the mother of the deceased girl. The story is about Royal, his final case; but it’s also about Royal as a man of integrity, a man who could be Atticus Finch’s protégé. Guterson reveals the work and dedication Royal has for his vocation.
Guterson writes some testimony from the trial. The first three quarters of the novel is about the trial. It’s a painful read, but an important illumination. For, Guterson illuminates problems in adoption laws. Parents can adopt a child, even though their child-rearing involved beatings and major punitive techniques. One can beat their child in the name of religion. The constitutional rights of parents supersede the rights of children from other countries. The Fourteenth Amendment bars questions that could vet out abuse in international adoptions.
After the trial though, the rhythm of the novel abruptly changes. Subjects like tea, socialism and racist white guys ramble along. From the title, I guessed it’s about the narrator’s father, but the swift change in cadence and subject left me scratching my head.
Nonetheless, I found this story to be important. Guterson is in top form as a literary author. I have always enjoyed his prose. I will remember this story. That alone is worth the 5 stars, even given the strange ending.
December 28, 2021
So, do you trust your authors? Will you stick with a book, even when you are not sure of the journey? Too often, I see readers who complain about a book and stop reading. They are bored. They don’t ‘like’ the characters. There are too many words. But I have learned to trust the author. A book is a journey. There may be unexpected side paths, or what seems like extraneous stops along the way, but when you reach the destination you discover the master plan and how it all fits together, building to an experience you won’t soon forget.
I have read several books like that this year. The Final Case is one of the books that a reader MUST finish to the end. Trust me—I was in tears.
The narrator is a writer who has decided to quite fiction and so is available to drive his elderly, practicing lawyer father as he prepares for a trial. The lawyer is to represent a despicable woman, who if not directly guilty of murder, has contributed to the death of an adopted girl. The old man explains to his son his belief in the law and due process, how he has lost at least as many cases as he has won.
The woman and her husband embraced a self-made theology based on punitive control over their children, with obedience their main goal. They adopted an African girl who has lost her family, who showed great tenderness and care to others in the orphanage, but who arrives unhealthy in body. The girl is proud. She will not be brought to control by lash or abuse. She will not become an automation reacting in fear, as the couple’s other children are, even meting their mother’s punishments on command. The children’s psychological health and wholeness are imperiled by this abusive control, but the parents believe they are ‘saved’.
Our narrator tells us his tale of aiding his father and what he learns about this case. He tells us about his sister and her tea house and the employee who quits, accusing the sister of participating in colonialism, ‘getting rich’ from another county’s resources. He tells us about the young man trying to write and how he is overwhelmed with the shoulds and don’ts of being a while male today. He tells us about the divisions of our contemporary world.
And in the end, he shares with us the answer.
It is so simple, really. We embrace our own sin and hold it dear, and count all else as evil. But we should know what is important. What is required of us? To do justice and love one another.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
I have read several books like that this year. The Final Case is one of the books that a reader MUST finish to the end. Trust me—I was in tears.
The narrator is a writer who has decided to quite fiction and so is available to drive his elderly, practicing lawyer father as he prepares for a trial. The lawyer is to represent a despicable woman, who if not directly guilty of murder, has contributed to the death of an adopted girl. The old man explains to his son his belief in the law and due process, how he has lost at least as many cases as he has won.
The woman and her husband embraced a self-made theology based on punitive control over their children, with obedience their main goal. They adopted an African girl who has lost her family, who showed great tenderness and care to others in the orphanage, but who arrives unhealthy in body. The girl is proud. She will not be brought to control by lash or abuse. She will not become an automation reacting in fear, as the couple’s other children are, even meting their mother’s punishments on command. The children’s psychological health and wholeness are imperiled by this abusive control, but the parents believe they are ‘saved’.
Our narrator tells us his tale of aiding his father and what he learns about this case. He tells us about his sister and her tea house and the employee who quits, accusing the sister of participating in colonialism, ‘getting rich’ from another county’s resources. He tells us about the young man trying to write and how he is overwhelmed with the shoulds and don’ts of being a while male today. He tells us about the divisions of our contemporary world.
And in the end, he shares with us the answer.
It is so simple, really. We embrace our own sin and hold it dear, and count all else as evil. But we should know what is important. What is required of us? To do justice and love one another.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
December 16, 2021
Beautifully written, but a bit slow-paced and when it ended I wasn't entirely sure exactly what it was about. More an exploration on people than about the actual case (or fictional case, I guess).
January 4, 2022
The Final Case by David Guterson is a legal drama with a difference. The lawyer in the story is an octogenarian who does not have a car and relies on his son for his commute to and from the courthouse. The son, also the narrator, is in a position to describe all that happened before, during and after the court case. The case concerns a young Ethiopian girl, Abeba, who has been adopted by a fundamentalist Christian couple with an unorthodox way of raising children. Abeba dies on a day when she is left in the back yard of her house for an entire day, on a cold and rainy day, in order to punish her for a minor infraction. The old lawyer is hired to defend the mother. This is a difficult subject matter but well worth the time. David Guterson’s prose shines because of its simplicity and beauty. Every sentence, every word keeps the pages turning. This is a book that could easily be re-read, for the simple pleasure of a story well told. The subject matter is serious and, at times, difficult but The Final Case will not disappoint. Highly recommended. Thank you to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, NetGalley and the author for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
March 1, 2022
I’m filled with self-doubt. I sort of loved this, but maybe it wasn’t as good as I thought it was. Maybe it was even crap. It’s probably not even a novel. It could be an unfinished manuscript of disjointed diary entries and inner dialogue and random observations and ideas for stories and a whole lot of introspection, and someone decided to publish it with a blurb about an international adoption gone terribly wrong and the ensuing legal drama, which is featured in large engrossing chunks, but it’s not really what this book is about.
It’s preachy. Really really preachy. And I usually hate that, but my god, the preachiness was funny. But also, kind of obvious. Are we supposed to be surprised when the wheelchaired old woman in the rural trailer rails for several pages against Wokeness and Feminists and BLM and LGBTQ+ and literally everything Tucker Carlson tells her to? Who is supposed to hate this stuff if not her? And what then of the Straight White Man who sits in an artisanal tea house in Seattle of all places drowning in woe over the misfortune of being a Straight White Man in Seattle and how all that Straightness and Whiteness and Manness and Seattleness is handicapping him and the novel he wants to write which sounds just as banal and contrived as the novel he’s co-staring in?
What am I supposed to make of this? And what am I supposed to make of myself for enjoying it, being engrossed in it, no less, even though it has the audacity to be written by the bane of all evil – the Straight White Man. Or so we’re told.
There’s an Ethiopian child in this book too, by the way. She was adopted by fundamentalist homeschooling cult members who abused her until she died. And there’s a lawyer who eats a lot of bran flakes. Why are they in this story? Why aren’t they the whole story? Do they even exist outside of metaphor? Is the lawyer the author’s dad in real life, or just his dad in the story? Because this whole thing is narrated by a Straight White Man author who spends a lot of time in an artisanal tea house and look, you’re either going to think all of this is brilliant or a big pile of talking points masquerading as a novel. I recommended it to my husband but now I’m thinking he will probably loathe it. Or love it. I don’t know, and I know him well, so how could I not know? We would both want to punch the whining writer in the tea house and we’d both laugh our asses off at the old Fox News woman who kind of reminds me of my husband’s stepmother who once told me she was going to vote for Trump because anyone would be better than Hilary Clinton and when I asked why she thought so all I got was a deer in the headlights look, which is also what I got when a coworker blurted out ‘Make America Great Again’ in a meeting back when we were still having meetings in offices, and HR made her go around and apologize to people as she sobbed in confusion and said she didn’t mean any offense by it and I asked “what did you mean?” and she stood there stunned and sputtered “I don’t know, it’s just the catchphrase…”
Everything is always just a catchphrase, isn’t it? This whole book is lamenting that and becoming that and maybe I like this book because it’s just the kind of rambling self-serving self-important thing I fantasize about writing if I were to become a writer, because I am unique just like everyone else, and I have nothing new to say and my book would likely be a hodgepodge of really obvious and true and maddening and pointless thoughts too but hey, at least I’m not a Man.
It’s preachy. Really really preachy. And I usually hate that, but my god, the preachiness was funny. But also, kind of obvious. Are we supposed to be surprised when the wheelchaired old woman in the rural trailer rails for several pages against Wokeness and Feminists and BLM and LGBTQ+ and literally everything Tucker Carlson tells her to? Who is supposed to hate this stuff if not her? And what then of the Straight White Man who sits in an artisanal tea house in Seattle of all places drowning in woe over the misfortune of being a Straight White Man in Seattle and how all that Straightness and Whiteness and Manness and Seattleness is handicapping him and the novel he wants to write which sounds just as banal and contrived as the novel he’s co-staring in?
What am I supposed to make of this? And what am I supposed to make of myself for enjoying it, being engrossed in it, no less, even though it has the audacity to be written by the bane of all evil – the Straight White Man. Or so we’re told.
There’s an Ethiopian child in this book too, by the way. She was adopted by fundamentalist homeschooling cult members who abused her until she died. And there’s a lawyer who eats a lot of bran flakes. Why are they in this story? Why aren’t they the whole story? Do they even exist outside of metaphor? Is the lawyer the author’s dad in real life, or just his dad in the story? Because this whole thing is narrated by a Straight White Man author who spends a lot of time in an artisanal tea house and look, you’re either going to think all of this is brilliant or a big pile of talking points masquerading as a novel. I recommended it to my husband but now I’m thinking he will probably loathe it. Or love it. I don’t know, and I know him well, so how could I not know? We would both want to punch the whining writer in the tea house and we’d both laugh our asses off at the old Fox News woman who kind of reminds me of my husband’s stepmother who once told me she was going to vote for Trump because anyone would be better than Hilary Clinton and when I asked why she thought so all I got was a deer in the headlights look, which is also what I got when a coworker blurted out ‘Make America Great Again’ in a meeting back when we were still having meetings in offices, and HR made her go around and apologize to people as she sobbed in confusion and said she didn’t mean any offense by it and I asked “what did you mean?” and she stood there stunned and sputtered “I don’t know, it’s just the catchphrase…”
Everything is always just a catchphrase, isn’t it? This whole book is lamenting that and becoming that and maybe I like this book because it’s just the kind of rambling self-serving self-important thing I fantasize about writing if I were to become a writer, because I am unique just like everyone else, and I have nothing new to say and my book would likely be a hodgepodge of really obvious and true and maddening and pointless thoughts too but hey, at least I’m not a Man.
March 4, 2023
"You already know about sadness, there can’t be anything in the book sadder than what you already know."
It is very hard to express my feelings, heartbroken, touched, sorrowful, and even wonder, how could this happen! How’d we come to this?
"The whole thing was sad. To tell you the truth, a lot of things in my work are sad. It’s sort of a sad world to have to move around in.”
This could be three stories. A writer, the narrator, his criminal attorney father, and his last case, an Ethiopian girl.
This was mostly a court story, not a mystery. An American parent was accused of killing her adopted Ethiopian daughter. When their four other children described the day their sister died, it was so sad!
"She’d had the sinking feeling, hurrying home, leaving everybody else behind, running, finally, with tears blurring her vision, that something was wrong with people. You would think, she said, that people were better than that."
This was a very emotional story with a unique writing style. The relationship between father and son is beautifully expressed. The story of the tragic life of Abigail was so moving. A very unforgettable read.
Undying Thanks to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group via NetGalley to give me a chance to read The Final Case by David Guterson, I have given my honest review.
Pub Date: 11 Jan 2022
Review Date: 04 Jan 2022
It is very hard to express my feelings, heartbroken, touched, sorrowful, and even wonder, how could this happen! How’d we come to this?
"The whole thing was sad. To tell you the truth, a lot of things in my work are sad. It’s sort of a sad world to have to move around in.”
This could be three stories. A writer, the narrator, his criminal attorney father, and his last case, an Ethiopian girl.
This was mostly a court story, not a mystery. An American parent was accused of killing her adopted Ethiopian daughter. When their four other children described the day their sister died, it was so sad!
"She’d had the sinking feeling, hurrying home, leaving everybody else behind, running, finally, with tears blurring her vision, that something was wrong with people. You would think, she said, that people were better than that."
This was a very emotional story with a unique writing style. The relationship between father and son is beautifully expressed. The story of the tragic life of Abigail was so moving. A very unforgettable read.
Undying Thanks to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group via NetGalley to give me a chance to read The Final Case by David Guterson, I have given my honest review.
Pub Date: 11 Jan 2022
Review Date: 04 Jan 2022
July 7, 2024
I don’t know what to make of The Final Case, by David Guterson. I’ve been trying to resolve the disparate parts of the narrative since I finished it last night. To be honest, though, the book feels unfinished. It feels half-baked, if I’m being blunt, because it doesn’t do anything with the real inspiration for the book’s premise other than to use it as a vehicle for the narrator to talk to people’s ruminations and justifications for some terrible thoughts and actions...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration.
January 27, 2022
I wish Mr. Guterson had more of a north star when he wrote this book. It wandered about on rabbit trails and strayed from the narrative so frequently that, aside from the trial and the father/son relationship, I'd lose sight of the novel's direction and intent.
Royal is an 84 year old criminal attorney without a current case. His car isn't working and his son is driving him places. His sons was a novelist who has decided not to write anymore. "My life clearly smacked of bourgeois retirement." One day the phone rings in Royal's office and he is asked to take a case due to a shortage of public defenders. He accepts and this leads to the heart of the story. Royal's office is in Seattle and the courthouse is in Skagit. His son drives back and forth with Royal every day for the trial and they have time to deepen their relationship as well as work on aspects of the case together.
The case is horrendous and emotionally fraught. Abeba Temesgen is an Ethiopian child who was adopted by Delvin and Betsey Harvey. Both parents are fundamentalist Christians who thrive on conspiracy theories, racism, child discipline and hatred of "the system". The charge against them is the murder of Abeba due to child torture and abuse. She ultimately died of hypothermia after being made to stay outside the home during freezing weather without appropriate garments. She was not allowed back into the home until she apologized to Betsey for being disrespectful. Abeba was a strong and wonderfully willful child who wasn't about to give in despite her beatings and punishments. By the time Betsey went outside to check on Abeba, she had died.
I found the father/son relationship touching though not very developed. It is obvious that the son respects his father greatly and admires his life's work and the way he lived but I don't feel I really got to know either of them. Both are stressed, trying to cope with a child abuse trial that is difficult to get your head around. Royal is prepared to lose the case, believing that the parents are evil and no redemption is possible. Despite this belief, he is defending the parents as well as he can. "To tell you the truth, a lot of things in my work are sad. It's sort of a sad world to have to move around it."
It is obvious that Mr. Guterson is questioning the system that allows parents like the Harveys to adopt an Ethiopian child. The most riveting parts of the book were the testimonies of the Harvey children and the interview with Betsy's mother. The rage and vituperativeness that spilled from Betsey's mother's mouth made my jaw drop despite my realizing that many people believe as she does.
I wish I could recommend this book more heartily but it just didn't grab me. I don't know if a different editor could have made a difference. Ultimately, I don't think so. I believe the problem is that the author wasn't sure where he wanted to go with all this and so ended up in a circular conundrum without true direction.
Royal is an 84 year old criminal attorney without a current case. His car isn't working and his son is driving him places. His sons was a novelist who has decided not to write anymore. "My life clearly smacked of bourgeois retirement." One day the phone rings in Royal's office and he is asked to take a case due to a shortage of public defenders. He accepts and this leads to the heart of the story. Royal's office is in Seattle and the courthouse is in Skagit. His son drives back and forth with Royal every day for the trial and they have time to deepen their relationship as well as work on aspects of the case together.
The case is horrendous and emotionally fraught. Abeba Temesgen is an Ethiopian child who was adopted by Delvin and Betsey Harvey. Both parents are fundamentalist Christians who thrive on conspiracy theories, racism, child discipline and hatred of "the system". The charge against them is the murder of Abeba due to child torture and abuse. She ultimately died of hypothermia after being made to stay outside the home during freezing weather without appropriate garments. She was not allowed back into the home until she apologized to Betsey for being disrespectful. Abeba was a strong and wonderfully willful child who wasn't about to give in despite her beatings and punishments. By the time Betsey went outside to check on Abeba, she had died.
I found the father/son relationship touching though not very developed. It is obvious that the son respects his father greatly and admires his life's work and the way he lived but I don't feel I really got to know either of them. Both are stressed, trying to cope with a child abuse trial that is difficult to get your head around. Royal is prepared to lose the case, believing that the parents are evil and no redemption is possible. Despite this belief, he is defending the parents as well as he can. "To tell you the truth, a lot of things in my work are sad. It's sort of a sad world to have to move around it."
It is obvious that Mr. Guterson is questioning the system that allows parents like the Harveys to adopt an Ethiopian child. The most riveting parts of the book were the testimonies of the Harvey children and the interview with Betsy's mother. The rage and vituperativeness that spilled from Betsey's mother's mouth made my jaw drop despite my realizing that many people believe as she does.
I wish I could recommend this book more heartily but it just didn't grab me. I don't know if a different editor could have made a difference. Ultimately, I don't think so. I believe the problem is that the author wasn't sure where he wanted to go with all this and so ended up in a circular conundrum without true direction.
November 22, 2021
I wanted to really enjoy this one. The premise is a great story about a writer taking time off to chauffer his aging father, an attorney who can no longer drive on what may be his last case. The case is the death of an Ethiopian foster child at the hands of her fundamentalist Christian parents. His father represents the parents in this case. Like he says someone has to represent them or it wouldn't be a fair trail. A sad story of bigotism, cruelty and abuse that rings all too true. That being said it started out really well. Then it went on and on without really getting to the story. I will say that the author's ability to write run on sentences is amazing in that one sentence filled a whole page.
I hate to say I didn't finish this one.
I hate to say I didn't finish this one.
January 20, 2022
This book is rather difficult to describe. Its many meaningful elements include the soul crushing description of the life of one little Ethiopian girl, the poignant story of a novelist son assisting his lawyer father conduct his last trial and then life after the trial.
Moving story.
Library Loan
Moving story.
Library Loan
January 1, 2022
I read Guterson’s prize winner, Snow Falling on Cedars, many years ago and, as I recall, found it well crafted but lacking fire. The Final Case shares certain qualities with the earlier work.The reviews by other authors were uniformly positive, although I haven’t heard much buzz about this in the press. His style is like an assignment in a graduate level creative writing class. Here is an example:
“ One day, Danielle, seeing that I had time on my hands, urged on me a master’s thesis one of her tea experts had scribed. Its pages were held together by three bronze-plated brads, and its exposed, frontal abstract was dimpled with appropriate tea stains. I sat for a languorous spell with it under [the tea shop’s] moth-eaten tapestries, in a slant of commodious October light falling generously through a wavy, leaded window, scratching my head and refilling from a teapot kept at quaffable temperature by a small bowl of candle wax whose lit wick, as time wore on, angled and then fell into oleaginous dregs.” Just a bit too self-aware of his gift for words.
The story divides abruptly into two major sections and almost as an afterthought ties the two parts together. In the introduction we meet the nameless narrator, an author by profession, and his father, a retired lawyer who has taken on a disturbing case pro bono. The narrator provides transportation for his 80 year old father and thus has a front row seat on the preparation for the case and the trial. A husband and wife have been accused of killing their adopted child, a girl from Ethiopia, and have expressed no remorse, believing they were morally justified in treating her as they did. There are many elements in the case to explore including White privilege and the government’s ability to provide oversight for children in their system. Before the judge can render a decision, the narrator’s father dies.
The next section concentrates on the narrator and his relationships with family, writers and other people with whom he interacts. I kept doggedly reading, waiting to find the connection to Part 1. A conclusion was ultimately reached but whether the second part did much to advance the plot I am not convinced. This is a story that has all the elements of a powerful drama — a search for justice, the cruelty of international conflicts, family relationships, and yet it barely stirred my blood. Guterson’s interest seems more academic than visceral which may provide good material for a writing workshop but doesn’t cry out to be read by the general public.
“ One day, Danielle, seeing that I had time on my hands, urged on me a master’s thesis one of her tea experts had scribed. Its pages were held together by three bronze-plated brads, and its exposed, frontal abstract was dimpled with appropriate tea stains. I sat for a languorous spell with it under [the tea shop’s] moth-eaten tapestries, in a slant of commodious October light falling generously through a wavy, leaded window, scratching my head and refilling from a teapot kept at quaffable temperature by a small bowl of candle wax whose lit wick, as time wore on, angled and then fell into oleaginous dregs.” Just a bit too self-aware of his gift for words.
The story divides abruptly into two major sections and almost as an afterthought ties the two parts together. In the introduction we meet the nameless narrator, an author by profession, and his father, a retired lawyer who has taken on a disturbing case pro bono. The narrator provides transportation for his 80 year old father and thus has a front row seat on the preparation for the case and the trial. A husband and wife have been accused of killing their adopted child, a girl from Ethiopia, and have expressed no remorse, believing they were morally justified in treating her as they did. There are many elements in the case to explore including White privilege and the government’s ability to provide oversight for children in their system. Before the judge can render a decision, the narrator’s father dies.
The next section concentrates on the narrator and his relationships with family, writers and other people with whom he interacts. I kept doggedly reading, waiting to find the connection to Part 1. A conclusion was ultimately reached but whether the second part did much to advance the plot I am not convinced. This is a story that has all the elements of a powerful drama — a search for justice, the cruelty of international conflicts, family relationships, and yet it barely stirred my blood. Guterson’s interest seems more academic than visceral which may provide good material for a writing workshop but doesn’t cry out to be read by the general public.
October 2, 2021
I hardly know how to express my thoughts about this novel, so I’ll just begin by describe my reading experience. I picked up The Final Case around midnight last night. I read until I realized that I was drifting off and carrying on the story in my own imagination, which was probably around three. I got up rather late this morning, drank some coffee, ate some breakfast, skimmed a couple of newspapers, and went back to bed, which is where I stayed until I finished reading.
Guterson makes some stylistic choices that confounded me in the moment, but that I am beginning to understand as I reflect on the whole. He does some things with his narrative that I found unconscionable until I didn’t. And, upon reading the book’s final words, I was a wreck for some unmeasured amount of time.
The murder of a child at the center of this novel is based on a real event, and Guterson doesn’t stray far from the facts of that case. What he does do is offer an artful, affecting meditation on grief and growing older while also interrogating what we expect from stories and how we understand the truth.
This one is going to stick with me.
Guterson makes some stylistic choices that confounded me in the moment, but that I am beginning to understand as I reflect on the whole. He does some things with his narrative that I found unconscionable until I didn’t. And, upon reading the book’s final words, I was a wreck for some unmeasured amount of time.
The murder of a child at the center of this novel is based on a real event, and Guterson doesn’t stray far from the facts of that case. What he does do is offer an artful, affecting meditation on grief and growing older while also interrogating what we expect from stories and how we understand the truth.
This one is going to stick with me.
February 8, 2022
Unemotional, unappealing, unfinished.
A short book, both in length and stature, yet it felt twice as long. Terribly disappointed at this latest offering by the author who gave us the beautifully written and haunting Snow Falling on Cedars. There was a pale imitation of a story, and a cast of superficially drawn characters, and a slow excruciating plot pace; but worst of all, the writing itself was well below the standard set by his previous work. Even more annoying, there were quite a few non-essential loose ends left to dangle forever (like dust in the wind, to borrow a situational phrase from DG) and that just irritates me to no end.
Was the story autobiographical? Ripped from the author’s own memories? I don’t know and I don’t even care. The narrator/author device appeared to just confuse me, and not in a good way.
Ugh. Two and a half stars.
PopSugar Reading Challenge 2022:
A Social-Horror Book.
A short book, both in length and stature, yet it felt twice as long. Terribly disappointed at this latest offering by the author who gave us the beautifully written and haunting Snow Falling on Cedars. There was a pale imitation of a story, and a cast of superficially drawn characters, and a slow excruciating plot pace; but worst of all, the writing itself was well below the standard set by his previous work. Even more annoying, there were quite a few non-essential loose ends left to dangle forever (like dust in the wind, to borrow a situational phrase from DG) and that just irritates me to no end.
Was the story autobiographical? Ripped from the author’s own memories? I don’t know and I don’t even care. The narrator/author device appeared to just confuse me, and not in a good way.
Ugh. Two and a half stars.
PopSugar Reading Challenge 2022:
A Social-Horror Book.
June 9, 2022
Somewhere in this strange and sad work of autofiction is a compelling and important story about a vulnerable little girl from Ethiopia who is beloved by her extended family, but they are too poor to provide her the care and eduction she deserves, so they allow her to be adopted by an American family. The American family—stay-at-home mother, Boeing mechanic father, and seven biological children, are devout Christians. The parents interpret their roles of disciplinarians to a devastating degree: their own children live according to a code of fear, and their adoptive daughter, Abigail, is eventually tortured to death.
It's there, this story, it's there because it really happened, years ago, and it took David Guterson the intervening time to process. The Final Case is based on a true story that unfolded in Skagit County, WA several years ago. David Guterson, whose family adopted a little girl from Ethiopia, sat in the courtroom as the horrific events were described and the perpetrators judged. His daughter had come from the same orphanage, her adoption processed by the same agency. The murdered child could have been his.
The best parts of The Final Case focus on this story and the ensuing courtroom drama. The unnamed narrator is a late middle-aged writer who has quit writing. He has time, therefore, to ferry his elderly father, a defense attorney assigned to represent the adoptive mother accused of murder. The narrator accompanies Dad to meetings with his client, to interviews with her extended family, and ultimately to court, where he witnesses the week-long trial of the mother and her husband, represented by a different attorney.
The story follows this trial, until it doesn't and the book devolves into a precious collection of dribbling sentences and meandering observations that explore what it means to live a meaningful life, if one only had the time to sit in tea shops, sipping pu-erh and watching the raindrops and contemplate their place in the universe. I alternated between boredom and despair and was glad when this slim novel came to an end.
It's there, this story, it's there because it really happened, years ago, and it took David Guterson the intervening time to process. The Final Case is based on a true story that unfolded in Skagit County, WA several years ago. David Guterson, whose family adopted a little girl from Ethiopia, sat in the courtroom as the horrific events were described and the perpetrators judged. His daughter had come from the same orphanage, her adoption processed by the same agency. The murdered child could have been his.
The best parts of The Final Case focus on this story and the ensuing courtroom drama. The unnamed narrator is a late middle-aged writer who has quit writing. He has time, therefore, to ferry his elderly father, a defense attorney assigned to represent the adoptive mother accused of murder. The narrator accompanies Dad to meetings with his client, to interviews with her extended family, and ultimately to court, where he witnesses the week-long trial of the mother and her husband, represented by a different attorney.
The story follows this trial, until it doesn't and the book devolves into a precious collection of dribbling sentences and meandering observations that explore what it means to live a meaningful life, if one only had the time to sit in tea shops, sipping pu-erh and watching the raindrops and contemplate their place in the universe. I alternated between boredom and despair and was glad when this slim novel came to an end.
March 25, 2022
It's unclear what Guterson was aiming to accomplish in this mixed bag of a novel. At its core is the trial of a rigid and extreme fundamentalist Christian couple whose many biological children are homeschooled and harshly disciplined. Delvin and Betsy Harvey have been charged with "homicide by abuse" of their recently adopted Ethiopian daughter. An elderly lawyer, the father of the novel's unnamed narrator, has agreed to defend Betsy. The mostly riveting middle section of The Final Case focuses on witness testimony; it is the book's only real strength. The rest--fragmented musings on the writing life in a polarized America and esoteric subjects, such as the culture of tea and tea drinking--don't really add much. Guterson's prose is occasionally long winded and ponderous. Sentences that at times run on for more than dozen lines aren't worth the effort, failing to reward even the most patient reader. In the end, I felt I'd been given a lot of puzzle pieces, not all of which belonged in the the same box.
April 24, 2022
I read the first third of The Final Case on the train yesterday and then I mulled over giving up on it. I went back and re-read a glowing NY Times book review and thought, "What am I missing?" So I decided to pick it back up for the train ride home and did manage to finish it.
What I do like:
The relationship between the narrator and his father, Royal, is lovely and feels true.
I get a really good sense of who these two people are.
The court scenes are well written and hold my attention.
What doesn't work for me:
There are a LOT of rambling asides that I feel could have been left out.
There are some scenes that don't seem relevant to the rest of the story such as the narrator meeting the other author for coffee, the narrator meeting with William and reviewing his manuscript, and the Camille/Alice fight.
The "bad guys" are all one dimensional.
One thought that gave me pause and explained some human behavior that has baffled me:
"The fact that people do what they do, or think what they think, or say what they say--it can be so inconsistent with their view of themselves that they deny to themselves that it ever happened. They invent a story for themselves in which they didn't think or feel or do or say anything wrong, and that story becomes reality for them, so real that they'll defend it to the bitter end, even when the facts in the real world say otherwise. They play this trick on themselves, because if they don't, they'll have to accept that they're not the good person they thought they were."
Now that I have shared this insight, feel free to skip reading this novel.
I will have to respectfully agree to disagree with critic and writer Scott Turow on this one.
What I do like:
The relationship between the narrator and his father, Royal, is lovely and feels true.
I get a really good sense of who these two people are.
The court scenes are well written and hold my attention.
What doesn't work for me:
There are a LOT of rambling asides that I feel could have been left out.
There are some scenes that don't seem relevant to the rest of the story such as the narrator meeting the other author for coffee, the narrator meeting with William and reviewing his manuscript, and the Camille/Alice fight.
The "bad guys" are all one dimensional.
One thought that gave me pause and explained some human behavior that has baffled me:
"The fact that people do what they do, or think what they think, or say what they say--it can be so inconsistent with their view of themselves that they deny to themselves that it ever happened. They invent a story for themselves in which they didn't think or feel or do or say anything wrong, and that story becomes reality for them, so real that they'll defend it to the bitter end, even when the facts in the real world say otherwise. They play this trick on themselves, because if they don't, they'll have to accept that they're not the good person they thought they were."
Now that I have shared this insight, feel free to skip reading this novel.
I will have to respectfully agree to disagree with critic and writer Scott Turow on this one.
January 29, 2022
Brief summary: A young girl adopted from Ethiopia by a fringe Fundamentalist Christian family has died and there is evidence that she has been abused. An octogenarian attorney takes her case. He is no longer able to drive, so he enlists the help of his writer son who has given up writing.
Don’t approach this book expecting a riveting political thriller. Yes, there is a court case, but there are also observations of family, aging, perversion of religion, racism and the all too familiar attributes of our culture today that embrace permanent states of outrage or cling to conspiratorial thoughts. The author had a lot to say; a lot of “grist for the mill”. I’m not sure on a first reading that I got it all, for there is a veritable smorgasbord of food for thought in this novel.
Don’t approach this book expecting a riveting political thriller. Yes, there is a court case, but there are also observations of family, aging, perversion of religion, racism and the all too familiar attributes of our culture today that embrace permanent states of outrage or cling to conspiratorial thoughts. The author had a lot to say; a lot of “grist for the mill”. I’m not sure on a first reading that I got it all, for there is a veritable smorgasbord of food for thought in this novel.
January 21, 2022
I listen to audiobooks while I garden my days away, I can’t think of the last time I just sat stock still and listened for a good hour, laser focused. One off the best books I’ve read in a long time.
October 6, 2022
I had forgotten the gentle, steadily-paced intensity and emotional depth & breadth of David Guterson's writing, until reading this novel. It is impossible for me to think of it as anything less than a loving & deeply respectful homage to Guterson's criminal defense lawyer father.
The narrator of the story is a novelist who has "stopped writing fiction." "Fiction writing was behind me in full. There were other possibilities now. If that leaves you wondering about this book -- wondering if I'm kidding, or playing a game, or if I've wandered into the margins of metafiction or the approximate terrain of auto fiction -- everything here is real." So says the narrator on page 10. His self-imposed quasi-retirement frees him up to help out his 83-year-old dad in the homicide case to which he is appointed.
The narrator's dad Royal has spent his whole adult life representing people charged with crimes, often for no or little compensation, or compensation that came in the form of fresh fish caught by a grateful former client or the quiet respect of colleagues. Royal and the narrator's mom live in the first & only home they bought and in which they raised the narrator and his sister Danielle who operates a tea cafe. The narrator and his wife Alison, Danielle and her husband Leonard, and their parents all live within about 15 minutes of each other in Seattle.
The case to which Royal is appointed, and which forms much of the story, is an almost incomprehensibly terrible one. As Royal says: "To tell you the truth, a lot of things in my work are sad. It's sort of a sad world to have to move around in." A girl Abebe Temesgen was born in Ethiopia in 1998, and through a series of losses ended up in an orphanage when she was about 10. From there, she was adopted by a couple in Washington who already had seven children, all homeschooled, and who had their own specialized form of fundamentalist Christian practices. Abebe died at the age of 11 from hypothermia, and her adoptive parents were both charged with homicide by abuse. Royal was appointed to represent the mother. "I guess I could tell myself that what she did just fills me with so much abhorrence that I can't represent her. . . . Every day, people are charged with heinous crimes because they've done heinous things, and every day, lawyers take their cases so the law can get on with what the law is about. . . . But, look, it doesn't matter if I think my client's guilty. What matters is what jurors think. So let them hear everything and let them decide. . . . They might have done the most evil things you can imagine, and you can abhor them for it, but if what they did doesn't conform to what they're charged with, then they're innocent. And that's important. If you convict someone because they're abhorrent, and not because they broke the law, you might as well live in a dictatorship."
So there are many layers to this story. There is the story of Abebe. There is the story of Royal. And there is the story of the narrator. And intertwined are stories of tea, poetry, cultural disagreements, crimes, writers' angst, and love. This novel is brimming with love of a son for his father, and as Royal says early on: "as for loving people, that doesn't have to be mutually exclusive with work, does it? Couldn't they happen at the same time?"
The narrator of the story is a novelist who has "stopped writing fiction." "Fiction writing was behind me in full. There were other possibilities now. If that leaves you wondering about this book -- wondering if I'm kidding, or playing a game, or if I've wandered into the margins of metafiction or the approximate terrain of auto fiction -- everything here is real." So says the narrator on page 10. His self-imposed quasi-retirement frees him up to help out his 83-year-old dad in the homicide case to which he is appointed.
The narrator's dad Royal has spent his whole adult life representing people charged with crimes, often for no or little compensation, or compensation that came in the form of fresh fish caught by a grateful former client or the quiet respect of colleagues. Royal and the narrator's mom live in the first & only home they bought and in which they raised the narrator and his sister Danielle who operates a tea cafe. The narrator and his wife Alison, Danielle and her husband Leonard, and their parents all live within about 15 minutes of each other in Seattle.
The case to which Royal is appointed, and which forms much of the story, is an almost incomprehensibly terrible one. As Royal says: "To tell you the truth, a lot of things in my work are sad. It's sort of a sad world to have to move around in." A girl Abebe Temesgen was born in Ethiopia in 1998, and through a series of losses ended up in an orphanage when she was about 10. From there, she was adopted by a couple in Washington who already had seven children, all homeschooled, and who had their own specialized form of fundamentalist Christian practices. Abebe died at the age of 11 from hypothermia, and her adoptive parents were both charged with homicide by abuse. Royal was appointed to represent the mother. "I guess I could tell myself that what she did just fills me with so much abhorrence that I can't represent her. . . . Every day, people are charged with heinous crimes because they've done heinous things, and every day, lawyers take their cases so the law can get on with what the law is about. . . . But, look, it doesn't matter if I think my client's guilty. What matters is what jurors think. So let them hear everything and let them decide. . . . They might have done the most evil things you can imagine, and you can abhor them for it, but if what they did doesn't conform to what they're charged with, then they're innocent. And that's important. If you convict someone because they're abhorrent, and not because they broke the law, you might as well live in a dictatorship."
So there are many layers to this story. There is the story of Abebe. There is the story of Royal. And there is the story of the narrator. And intertwined are stories of tea, poetry, cultural disagreements, crimes, writers' angst, and love. This novel is brimming with love of a son for his father, and as Royal says early on: "as for loving people, that doesn't have to be mutually exclusive with work, does it? Couldn't they happen at the same time?"
November 1, 2021
I expected to love this novel, especially since I have a niece from Ethiopia. Sadly, it didn’t live up to my expectations and I found the prose too rambling for my taste. The central plot involves the narrator and his family as well as the sad death of an Ethiopian child adopted by an American family, stereotypically right wing religious bigots.
I was saddened by the plot, but never really engaged.
Thank you Netgalley for this ARC.
I was saddened by the plot, but never really engaged.
Thank you Netgalley for this ARC.
November 7, 2021
I wanted to love this book the way I did “Snow Falling on Cedars”. I did not. It’s hard to describe how jumbled this book was for me. The main thread is the final case for an old defense attorney which revolves around the horrific death of an Ethiopian foster child at the hands of her fundamentalist Christian parents. The subplots, which aren’t so sub because they run on individually way too long, include the relationship of the writer protagonist with his elderly and beloved father (the lawyer), fundamentalist Christian extremes, life in Ethiopia, cruelty, his thoughts on aging and writing and work, his life with his wife, relations with friends, his mother, and more, and none of this really hangs together. Guterson is a beautiful writer, but I found this a mess in desperate need of cohesion and editing. The ball was dropped.
September 18, 2021
"The Final Case" is a lot. There's an attorney in his 80's asked to defend Betsy Harvey, a woman accused of killing her adopted Ethiopian daughter in an especially protracted and heartrending way. The novel is narrated by the attorney's son who reconnects with his father by being his chauffeur and back-up in the case. The writing is piercing, but fundamentalist Christians are becoming the go-to option for people who do something terrible but think it is right. I'm still thinking about this novel without being able to understand anyone's motivation.
December 6, 2021
I had forgotten how "densely" Guterson writes, each sentence being worthy of some examination, not just a bridge from one space to another. This is a sad tale of abuse and the honor of a lawyer to represent the abuser as best he can. It's the revealing of a father's life, and what he considers important to himself and his place in the world, and his son's attempt to understand that place. It doesn't appear as though the son has entirely formed an opinion of his own place in the world, or perhaps, come to a crossroads.
July 13, 2022
It's almost impossible to offer a qualitative judgment of THE FINAL CASE, given its metafictional leanings, its nod toward the legal-thriller genre without ever stepping close to it, and the fact that it has less a plot than a through-line — that of the author and his family and some of the things they've seen and done, gauzy behind the thin veil of pseudonyms and reordered memories.
Is it "good"? Who's to say, really? Not me. Because "good," I suspect, is impossible to separate from one's patience for this kind of storytelling, and one's interest in its narrator's wanderings from court cases to memories of his father to rhapsodies about his wife to what amounts to a state-of-the-union unpacking about the state of white-male writers in America in 2022. It starts with something of a jerk-around, a pronouncement in metafictional mode: "If that leaves you wondering about this book—wondering if I’m kidding, or playing a game, or if I’ve wandered into the margins of metafiction or the approximate terrain of autofiction—everything here is real." It probably is, depending on one's patience for discourse about the distance between truth and fact. But, outside of conventional memoir form, which the notoriously private Guterson (a long-elusive, elliptical presence in my hometown of Bainbridge Island) shuns, is that compelling? That calls for a non-qualitative answer.
For most literary luminaries, the answer is "yes," because, I suspect, Guterson hasn't written much fiction in the last fifteen years or so, and they're just glad to have him back, this writer of graceful prose and thoughtful reflection.
For me, it's "yes, except when no."
It's well-written, mostly, but sometimes not, with the occasional clunky, overreaching line, like "Her front teeth met the way two playing cards do when stood on end and propped against each other." Figurative writing, for this student of the Raymond Carver/Richard Ford school of realism, has never been a strength of Guterson's. But his gift for human insight is intact, and, as the author stares down the barrel of his late sixties, even at new heights, particularly when sharing bits of fatherly wisdom: "When you’re young, you have a big advantage. You’re the new kid. Then, in your middle years, there’s no getting around it—people think you’re a jerk. Then you get along in years like me, and, fortunately, the picture brightens. They all think you’re out of it, which is true to some extent, so they’re nice again, like in the old days.”
Otherwise, I found that I like the legal-thriller aspects of it the most, and felt a bit adrift after Gauterson passed on to other absorptions. You probably know the story behind the story, but the trial of the Harveys, a Skagit County couple whose beyond-fundamentalist approach to Christian child-rearing led their adopted Ethiopian daughter to die of neglect, is an all-but-Hoyle recreation of a trial Guterson himself attended (he and his wife adopted an Ethiopian girl through the same paths the Harveys did, and belong to a community of like folks). The highlight of that part of the book is not so much any Grisham-esque or Turow-like legal machinations, but a long, sustained, hateful rant by the family matriarch that manages to bundle every ethnic and political group into a kit bag of concentrated dismissive disdain. It's really a jaw-dropping horror to behold, and it opens with "“You know what? You’re from Seattle. In Seattle, they elect communists to sit on their city council. They call it socialist, but it’s the same—communist. Seattle got the wool pulled over their eyes. By the people make the commercials on television. You realize that?" and goes on for several pages. You don't need me to point out that the woman's views, serenely untroubled by nuance or fact, are those of upwards of 40 percent of Americans in 2022.
Equally discomforting, in a different way, is the book's other sustained rant, a self-pitying splatter by a young white writer who feels he's missed his time and place, and resents himself and the world for it, and lets loose in an orgasm of corrosive privilege. As he tells our narrator: "Upper-class white guy—the villain in movies. I’m despicable doing nothing, just sitting on my ass. I take classes where I’m told, by everyone in the room, that I’m racist by definition, doesn’t matter what I think—all I have to do is sit there inside my white skin to be racist, that’s it—and if I don’t respond to that, just sit there silently, that’s racist, too, and at the same time, if I speak, doesn’t matter what I say, it’s racist, and it’s about time I recognized it, because recognition is the first step, and after that, if I don’t wear a sign around my neck saying I’m a racist, and if I don’t become an activist working against racism, doing things that will lead to a day when white guys like me aren’t in charge anymore, then that’s racist, too." It goes on from there in a similarly loathsomely self-loathing vein.
So, I dunno. In the end, all I have is my experience with THE FINAL CASE. I liked it except when I was impatient with it. I understood it except when I didn't. I'm glad I read it, I guess, though I can't imagine reading it again. I'm glad David Guterson's still at it, I suppose, and hasn't completely given up prose for poetry, as was believed to be the case some time ago. He's got things to say, and those things are worth listening to, and THE FINAL CASE is full of Things to Say, some of which hit the mark for me, and some of which didn't. Which is fine. If I wrote a similar novel about myself, I expect its readers would have the same kind of ambivalence.
Is it "good"? Who's to say, really? Not me. Because "good," I suspect, is impossible to separate from one's patience for this kind of storytelling, and one's interest in its narrator's wanderings from court cases to memories of his father to rhapsodies about his wife to what amounts to a state-of-the-union unpacking about the state of white-male writers in America in 2022. It starts with something of a jerk-around, a pronouncement in metafictional mode: "If that leaves you wondering about this book—wondering if I’m kidding, or playing a game, or if I’ve wandered into the margins of metafiction or the approximate terrain of autofiction—everything here is real." It probably is, depending on one's patience for discourse about the distance between truth and fact. But, outside of conventional memoir form, which the notoriously private Guterson (a long-elusive, elliptical presence in my hometown of Bainbridge Island) shuns, is that compelling? That calls for a non-qualitative answer.
For most literary luminaries, the answer is "yes," because, I suspect, Guterson hasn't written much fiction in the last fifteen years or so, and they're just glad to have him back, this writer of graceful prose and thoughtful reflection.
For me, it's "yes, except when no."
It's well-written, mostly, but sometimes not, with the occasional clunky, overreaching line, like "Her front teeth met the way two playing cards do when stood on end and propped against each other." Figurative writing, for this student of the Raymond Carver/Richard Ford school of realism, has never been a strength of Guterson's. But his gift for human insight is intact, and, as the author stares down the barrel of his late sixties, even at new heights, particularly when sharing bits of fatherly wisdom: "When you’re young, you have a big advantage. You’re the new kid. Then, in your middle years, there’s no getting around it—people think you’re a jerk. Then you get along in years like me, and, fortunately, the picture brightens. They all think you’re out of it, which is true to some extent, so they’re nice again, like in the old days.”
Otherwise, I found that I like the legal-thriller aspects of it the most, and felt a bit adrift after Gauterson passed on to other absorptions. You probably know the story behind the story, but the trial of the Harveys, a Skagit County couple whose beyond-fundamentalist approach to Christian child-rearing led their adopted Ethiopian daughter to die of neglect, is an all-but-Hoyle recreation of a trial Guterson himself attended (he and his wife adopted an Ethiopian girl through the same paths the Harveys did, and belong to a community of like folks). The highlight of that part of the book is not so much any Grisham-esque or Turow-like legal machinations, but a long, sustained, hateful rant by the family matriarch that manages to bundle every ethnic and political group into a kit bag of concentrated dismissive disdain. It's really a jaw-dropping horror to behold, and it opens with "“You know what? You’re from Seattle. In Seattle, they elect communists to sit on their city council. They call it socialist, but it’s the same—communist. Seattle got the wool pulled over their eyes. By the people make the commercials on television. You realize that?" and goes on for several pages. You don't need me to point out that the woman's views, serenely untroubled by nuance or fact, are those of upwards of 40 percent of Americans in 2022.
Equally discomforting, in a different way, is the book's other sustained rant, a self-pitying splatter by a young white writer who feels he's missed his time and place, and resents himself and the world for it, and lets loose in an orgasm of corrosive privilege. As he tells our narrator: "Upper-class white guy—the villain in movies. I’m despicable doing nothing, just sitting on my ass. I take classes where I’m told, by everyone in the room, that I’m racist by definition, doesn’t matter what I think—all I have to do is sit there inside my white skin to be racist, that’s it—and if I don’t respond to that, just sit there silently, that’s racist, too, and at the same time, if I speak, doesn’t matter what I say, it’s racist, and it’s about time I recognized it, because recognition is the first step, and after that, if I don’t wear a sign around my neck saying I’m a racist, and if I don’t become an activist working against racism, doing things that will lead to a day when white guys like me aren’t in charge anymore, then that’s racist, too." It goes on from there in a similarly loathsomely self-loathing vein.
So, I dunno. In the end, all I have is my experience with THE FINAL CASE. I liked it except when I was impatient with it. I understood it except when I didn't. I'm glad I read it, I guess, though I can't imagine reading it again. I'm glad David Guterson's still at it, I suppose, and hasn't completely given up prose for poetry, as was believed to be the case some time ago. He's got things to say, and those things are worth listening to, and THE FINAL CASE is full of Things to Say, some of which hit the mark for me, and some of which didn't. Which is fine. If I wrote a similar novel about myself, I expect its readers would have the same kind of ambivalence.
May 16, 2024
I was under the impression that this was about a court case and a young girl who had suffered abuse. While this was a portion of the book, the majority had nothing to do with this. It was a lot of endless babble and disjointed ideas. It did not hold my interest at all and I struggled to get through it.
Many thanks to Netgalley, Edelweiss, Knopf and David Guterson for my complimentary e-copy ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Many thanks to Netgalley, Edelweiss, Knopf and David Guterson for my complimentary e-copy ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
June 8, 2022
This book aroused many feelings as it loosely followed a true murder case which happened in my home town in Skagit County and dealt with an elderly lawyer and the assistance his son gave him which also hits close to home with my life situation. I would have rated it a 5 star but the author seemed to struggle with how to end it. Certainly a book well worth reading as most of this talented author’s books are.
February 7, 2023
3.25 stars.
Overall, I felt like this book lacked in direction. It seemed to rabbit trail and go off in a different path every so often and took away from the main trial.
I did enjoy the trial, and the father/son relationship and how the story wrapped up!
Overall, I felt like this book lacked in direction. It seemed to rabbit trail and go off in a different path every so often and took away from the main trial.
I did enjoy the trial, and the father/son relationship and how the story wrapped up!
September 13, 2022
From the author of Snow Falling on Cedars (PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Winners, 1995) comes a disturbing legal drama. In this fictionalized account, a thirteen-year-old Ethiopian girl adopted by a conservative, white fundamentalist Christian couple is found dead of hypothermia a few feet from the back door of her home in Seattle. Her adoptive parents are put on trial for murder. An octogenarian criminal attorney defends the mother, Betsy Harvey. His son narrates the story as he drives his father to and from court.
In 2013, a jury found Carri and Larry Williams guilty on almost all the charges brought against them: manslaughter of Hana, and for Carri, homicide by abuse. They were also convicted of first-degree assault of a child for abusing her younger brother, Immanuel, both of whom were adopted from Ethiopia. Larry was sentenced to almost 28 years and Carri to just under 37.
Many readers wrote glowing reviews of The Final Case, but mine will not be one of those. I applaud the concept of the book; it is a horrifying, thought-provoking story of an innocent child being disciplined to death by overzealous, cruel parents. David Guterson is a talented storyteller and painted vivid word pictures, but this was a very frustrating read. Much of the book had no bearing on its premise. Why did it matter how the narrator met his wife, etc.? He went down very long, albeit funny, trails of nothing to do with anything. It reminded me of Cliff Clavin on Cheers who liked to hear himself talk.
I just didn’t like the writing. There would be a modicum of plot followed by pages of word explosions. I nearly shut the book because of the overdose of adjectives and the ridiculously long sentences, one of which was 243 words long! Not for me. 2 stars.
** Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy of this book. The opinions are my own.
In 2013, a jury found Carri and Larry Williams guilty on almost all the charges brought against them: manslaughter of Hana, and for Carri, homicide by abuse. They were also convicted of first-degree assault of a child for abusing her younger brother, Immanuel, both of whom were adopted from Ethiopia. Larry was sentenced to almost 28 years and Carri to just under 37.
Many readers wrote glowing reviews of The Final Case, but mine will not be one of those. I applaud the concept of the book; it is a horrifying, thought-provoking story of an innocent child being disciplined to death by overzealous, cruel parents. David Guterson is a talented storyteller and painted vivid word pictures, but this was a very frustrating read. Much of the book had no bearing on its premise. Why did it matter how the narrator met his wife, etc.? He went down very long, albeit funny, trails of nothing to do with anything. It reminded me of Cliff Clavin on Cheers who liked to hear himself talk.
I just didn’t like the writing. There would be a modicum of plot followed by pages of word explosions. I nearly shut the book because of the overdose of adjectives and the ridiculously long sentences, one of which was 243 words long! Not for me. 2 stars.
** Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy of this book. The opinions are my own.
December 25, 2021
One of the most loving, thoughtful portraits of the relationship between a father and son I've ever experienced. This is the first of Guterson's books I've read, won't be the last. His tender descriptions of human relationships are breathtaking, and - as an adoptive mother - I got lost in the actual court case at the heart of this story. Guterson's characters inadvertently spew so many toxic opinions, chronicling the hyperpolarization of this moment in America, totally without making those horrible characters the focus of his gorgeous plot. Yet the judge's words at the end (which I won't spoil here) could be the right (final ?) words for so many of us to us at our dinner tables, family gatherings, etc. I loved this so much and did not want it to end (yet read it in about 3 hours over the holidays). What a beauty.
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