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Never Going Back
A novel about memory, loss, redemption, and the effect a teen suicide has on friends.
279 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2010
5 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 27, 2017
For numerous reasons, this just wasn't the book for me. The writing didn't catch me, and being somewhat familiar with Nelson and the areas mentioned in the book, I just felt like there was something missing for me.
It took me a long time to get attached to these characters (almost without exception). I forced my way through almost half the book before the momentum to finish it and find out what happened started to kick in (some latent guilt about feeling like I should read the birthday gift from a beloved family member). The book rotates perspectives among a small group of friends, several of whom live in other places (the big city) before returning to Nelson for a special ceremony that the mother of one of the group has asked for: commemorating the 10 year anniversary of the death of her niece, who died somewhat mysteriously. I won't give away more of the plot for those of you interested in reading this book after all.
For a book set in the Kootenays, I was surprised by my lukewarm feeling about it.
It took me a long time to get attached to these characters (almost without exception). I forced my way through almost half the book before the momentum to finish it and find out what happened started to kick in (some latent guilt about feeling like I should read the birthday gift from a beloved family member). The book rotates perspectives among a small group of friends, several of whom live in other places (the big city) before returning to Nelson for a special ceremony that the mother of one of the group has asked for: commemorating the 10 year anniversary of the death of her niece, who died somewhat mysteriously. I won't give away more of the plot for those of you interested in reading this book after all.
For a book set in the Kootenays, I was surprised by my lukewarm feeling about it.
October 8, 2010
From a distance Nelson, British Columbia is an idyllic community of new agers and aging hippies, folded away in the Selkirk Mountains. People move to Nelson to escape frenetic city life and to live their own way; when they leave, they remember the place fondly. No town, however, is idyllic to the children born and raised there. No town is immune to tragedy. In Never Going Back, Antonia Banyard’s atmospheric tale, estranged friends return to Nelson to observe the ten-year anniversary of a layered tragedy that still entangles them all.
Never Going Back is as much a mediation on memory and guilt as it is a novel. It examines a community’s responsibility for the happiness and well-being of its outcasts, and mourns the personal cost of the cruelties we commit to save ourselves. I think you will enjoy it, so long as you don’t expect sweeping drama or large epiphanies. The book begins with the death of a culprit and ends with a birth, but these are bookends of a diffuse narrative driven more by ideas than by plot. The tragedy, after all took place ten years before the story begins, so the drama comes to us as memories that, while still raw, are incapable of causing further harm. You’d be hard pressed to assign the role of main character. Siobhan’s perspective begins the book; we then meet Evan and Lance. But none of these characters is any more capable of taking hold of the story than they are of taking hold of their lives. Banyard describes Nelson as “not a backwoods town, so much as an eddy in a stream.” These characters might well be leaves stuck in that eddy and the resolution, satisfying, though small, is that by the last page all three will be able, finally, to free themselves and move on.
Never Going Back is as much a mediation on memory and guilt as it is a novel. It examines a community’s responsibility for the happiness and well-being of its outcasts, and mourns the personal cost of the cruelties we commit to save ourselves. I think you will enjoy it, so long as you don’t expect sweeping drama or large epiphanies. The book begins with the death of a culprit and ends with a birth, but these are bookends of a diffuse narrative driven more by ideas than by plot. The tragedy, after all took place ten years before the story begins, so the drama comes to us as memories that, while still raw, are incapable of causing further harm. You’d be hard pressed to assign the role of main character. Siobhan’s perspective begins the book; we then meet Evan and Lance. But none of these characters is any more capable of taking hold of the story than they are of taking hold of their lives. Banyard describes Nelson as “not a backwoods town, so much as an eddy in a stream.” These characters might well be leaves stuck in that eddy and the resolution, satisfying, though small, is that by the last page all three will be able, finally, to free themselves and move on.
July 18, 2010
I liked this book. It's a quiet sort of story, more about characters and how they relate to one another, their inability to move on with their lives since a friend's suicide in high school. A group of friends reunite in Nelson, BC for a dead friend's memorial. Banyard is wonderful at finding the telling details that display a person's full character. I especially liked the relationship with Lance and Kristy, the gentle look at their alien-selves. I would have like an entire Lance and Kristy novel!
I have to say though the publisher/editor completely dropped the ball -- there are typos galore. It was distracting and I felt bad for the author. Sometimes a full sentence is repeated as though the editor copied and pasted forgetting to cut the original placement of the sentence. I hope Antonia Banyard seeks another publisher for future novels. This one is not worthy of her talent.
I have to say though the publisher/editor completely dropped the ball -- there are typos galore. It was distracting and I felt bad for the author. Sometimes a full sentence is repeated as though the editor copied and pasted forgetting to cut the original placement of the sentence. I hope Antonia Banyard seeks another publisher for future novels. This one is not worthy of her talent.
July 20, 2015
The thing I liked most about this book is that it is set in the town I live in, which is fun. It was neat to be able to picture the exact spot things occur rather than forming your own image in your mind, which is what occurs with most novel settings. The story was OK, but not really my style. Glad I got it out from the library rather than buying it, as I likely would not read it again. The character named Evan was so annoying, I was hoping he'd change into a more reasonable, understanding person by the end, but alas, not really. I don't really see how any of the other characters actually wanted to be friends with that guy.
Want to read
August 5, 2010review copy from author
January 23, 2011
An interesting book - set in and around Nelson, BC where I have been visiting my son for the past few months. Enjoyable to read a book set in a known landscape.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews