The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke

The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke

From Jules Brenner

     If there's anything sheriff detective Dave Robicheaux values strongly besides bringing criminals to justice they are his relationships, which are his treasures. From his new wife Molly, to his adopted daughter Alafair and all the creatures in residence in his home, to bounty hunter and partner in arms Clete Purcell, to his boss Helen Soileau who calls him "Pops," "Bwana" and "Streak" according to her mood — these people are in his heart and mind as he pursues depraved criminals amidst the roiling chaos of an historic blast of nature—Hurricane Katrina.

     In its aftermath, crime is as rampant as the breakdown of law and order allows, providing a river of plunder for opportunists of every description — those who, according to Dave, bring to mind "simian ancestry in the human gene pool." And, with the NOPD virtually wiped out, it falls to Helen's department in New Iberia parish to furnish some primary law enforcement in the city of New Orleans. Which brings Dave's attention to a pernicious strain of human debasement.

     The case starts with Natalia Ramos, an ex-prostitute shacking up with addict Father Jude LeBlanc whom she can't find and is desperately looking for. But the agreement of witness accounts indicates that her stiff-collared lover was accosted by four black men as he was breaking a hole in the roof of his church in the Lower 9th ward as an escape hatch when the rising river threatened the lives of the people who sought refuge with him. Compounding tragedy, however, the attack caused his drowning, along with his parishioners. As for the four black men, they were only after the priest's motorboat.
     Brothers Eddy and Bertrand Melancon, Andre Rochon and his young nephew Kevin comprise a team whose specialty in life is house robbery, with a minor in bail jumping. Now seeing the storm "as a gift from God," and having no need to "crowd into the stink at the Superdome," they happen upon Thelma Baylor, a young white girl, and rape and torture her. Afterward, "...sharing drinks from a silver flask and happy as hogs rolling in shit" they troll the uptown area of the city for some more payback against the white man. It is at this point in their predatory journey that they wind up in the mansion of one Sidney Kovick, a local mobster, and discover a hiding place with a .38 snub, a ziploc bag of blood diamonds, and five bundles of hundred dollar bills.

     What they don't know is that they've been spotted by the residents of the only mansion on the street with lights burning, where Otis Baylor, wife Melanie and daughter Thelma reside — yes, Thelma Baylor, the girl they raped. Their night of plunder will come to an end when, upon the quartet's return to the Kovick house for what they might have missed, a single bullet bursts Eddy's throat and tears Kevin's skull apart.
     Who pulled that trigger is one of the primary mysteries for Dave to solve, but it's not the only problem on the overworked detective's plate. Trumping everything is the appearance of Ronald Bledsoe, an independent opportunist whom Dave recognizes as a man of sociopathic ammorality and great cruelty whose presence multiplies the tension fourfold. As Dave describes him, he's a man whose "head and face look like the end of a dildo." Bledsoe now takes pre-eminence in Dave's playbook of worries because, from the way the man talks and behaves, Dave knows he's no mere lowlife. Dave recognizes this smooth operator as a mortal danger, and that he's after Alafair, who has profoundly and publically subjected Bledsoe to the full weight of her contempt. (This character may be based to some degree on Burke's real daughter Alafair, the author of Dead Connection)

     From the residents of New Orleans who lived through the storm devastation to the millions who read about it from a distance with a mixture of awe and sympathy, the picture they have of the city is incomplete without a reading of Burke's horror-steeped journey through "New Orlean's long night of the soul." He inserts his fictional characters into the mother of all storms and it reads like a deep wound felt at first hand. Burke, himself a resident of New Iberia, describes a milieu of mayhem in which crime and revenge is as mental as it is physical, and where the central character has the capacity to weigh guilt against remorse like few other dedicated guardians of the law are disposed to do.

     Burke's literary power is in the meticulous creation of exemplars of mankind across the spectrum of good and evil. His overriding need for justice is urgent; his rage at the bestial and the unconcerned is equally palpable; the hope he maintains for a positive outcome is redemptive; and his irony is penetrating. The processes Burke uses amount to the most emotion-soaked, three-dimensional literature in the field, poetic and tough.

http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/mysteryreviews/fr/tinRoofBlowdown.htm

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

By Mark Flanagan, About.com Guide

     I knew after reading the first paragraph that Joshua Ferris had nailed it. He utterly nails the boredom, the cynicism, and the resignation that is work in the corporate cubicle culture. What The Office brought to television, what Office Space brought to the movies, and what Dilbert brought to comics, Then We Came to the End brings to literature.
     "We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen... We thought that moving to India might be better, or going back to nursing school. Doing something with the handicapped or working with our hands. No one ever acted on these impulses, despite their daily, sometimes hourly contractions. Instead we met in conference rooms to discuss the issues of the day."

     Ferris's novel is like an episode of Seinfeld - an episode in which Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer all work for a big Chicago ad agency. Nothing much happens. It's hilarious. Ferris imbues his characters with the foibles and frailties of everyday people, not unlike the people you're working with right now; he doesn't lampoon them.
     We cringe as Tom Mota becomes somewhat unhinged early in the novel, wearing a corporate polo shirt for thirty straight days before being offered two more polos from his well-meaning coworkers and donning those in layers above the first; we wonder at Chris Yopp who, after being layed-off, returns surreptitiously to work two more days, clinging desperately and in vain to a job he's already lost; our jaws drop to see Janine Gorjanc sitting in a pool of plastic balls at the McDonald's PlayPlace, still mourning the loss of her daughter; and we marvel at Benny Shassburger's attachment to a large Native American totem pole left to him by a fellow employee.

     It is as though Ferris creates these viably flawed characters, with all their hopes, fears, and insecurities, and then simply sets them down, releases them within the simulated cube farm of his novel - SimOffice if you will - and they just do the rest. Their interactions alternately elicit laughter and empathy in the reader, and much of this comes from the fact that we know these people. We've worked with them ourselves. In fact, we are these people.

     Ferris knocks this point home with his first-person plural narrator. The use of "we" throughout the novel is awkward in places, but any detraction is far outweighed by how well it achieves the desired effect. In the midst of layoffs brought on by the dot com downturn, we find ourselves alongside these characters, moving from cubicle to cubicle to tell stories and gossip, fearing the loss of these jobs we're not even sure we wanted to begin with.

     Ultimately, Then We Came to the End is about life. We are bored with our work, we are disaffected - it's true. Our lives are far bigger than these deadlines and the need to submit our TPS reports on time. Our loved ones, our unwritten novels, the totem poles we all keep in a sacred place away from these beige cubicle walls - these are our reasons for living and the reasons why our time at the office seems like too much of an imposition to ask.

     Ultimately, we are like our coworkers in Then We Came to the End - we need to work, and we value this opportunity most in the face of losing it. Joshua Ferris taps into this, and he makes sure we remember having worked here.

http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/fiction/fr/thenWeCameToThe.htm

Marco Polo - From Venice to Xanadu by Laurence Bergreen

Marco Polo - From Venice to Xanadu by Laurence Bergreen

Reviewed by Traci J. Macnamara

     Laurence Bergreen's (Over the Edge of the World) Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu will inspire even the most adventurous travelers. But readers of this book will only have to turn a few pages to realize that modern-day escapades such as trekking in Bhutan, sailing in the Galapagos, or eco-touring in Alaska cannot possibly rival those that Marco Polo and his two family members encountered on their overland journey from Venice to the court of Kublai Kahn.

     In 1271, Marco Polo was just seventeen years old when he left his Venetian home to embark on an unimaginably arduous journey across Asia. Polo traveled with his merchant father and uncle, who had previously made the trip and promised the great Mongol leader, Kublai Kahn, that they would return. Instead of sailing around India to reach the capital city of Cambulac (Beijing), the three Europeans trekked through deserts and mountains along ancient traders' routes that would eventually become known as the Silk Road.

     Marco Polo did not see his home for another twenty-four years, and he was lucky to see it again at all. Bergreen catalogs the dangers of such a journey: "A drought; a sandstorm; a debilitating disease, a renegade squad of murderous thieves; jealous rivals…a sudden snowstorm or bolt of lightning-any of these common occurrences could have brought the expedition to a sudden end." As they spent days on camels plodding through a continent's wastelands, Polo and company must have had time to consider the consequences. "No rescue party would have come looking for them," Bergreen says, "and few in Venice would have mourned their passing."

     When the three weary travelers finally arrived in Cambulac, Marco's father and uncle sought out the Great Kahn in order to present the gift of holy oil that they had promised to bring him when they returned. But instead of delivering the one hundred wise men that they had also vowed to bring, Marco Polo's father presented his son. For the next seventeen years, Marco Polo served in the court of Kublai Kahn in various roles ranging from messenger to tax collector, and the two developed what Bergreen calls " a most unusual partnership as master and servant, teacher and disciple, and even father and son."
     Bergreen's account of Marco Polo's extended stay in the Mongol court is rich with relevant historical detail and full of interesting diversions into subjects such as falconry, silk production, opium, astronomy, and religion. However, when Bergreen shifts his focus away from Marco Polo for too long, as he does in lengthy sections devoted to Kublai Kahn or the history of the Mongol Empire, readers may find themselves hoping that he will soon return to the he book's most interesting character.
     Besides captivating readers with his youthful enthusiasm for seeing the world, Marco Polo remains a fascinating subject even after he has returned home to Venice. Bergreen does not succumb to hero-worship, nor does he spare readers the details of Polo's character defects. Instead, Bergreen tells how, in his later years, Marco Polo had earned a reputation as a miser, a liar, and an instigator of family quarrels. Even on his deathbead, Marco Polo was amending his will.

     Perhaps even more important than the wealth that Marco Polo left with his survivors was the narrative account of his journeys, called the Travels, that outlived him by several centuries. In a time before moveable type, renowned writer Rustichello of Pisa recorded Marco Polo's tales while the two were held captive as prisoners of war in a Genoese jail. Bergreen draws upon the Travels, other original sources, and his own travels along Polo's route to masterfully fuse history with biography in this book.
     Marco Polo may be remembered as one of history's most celebrated explorers, but Bergreen reminds us that Marco Polo simply "went wherever the winds of fortune carried him." Polo was not trying to achieve the reputation that he has, and his travels were, in fact, less impressive than those of his father and uncle. As a merchant, however, Marco Polo serves as an example of the very contemporary idea that commerce is "the essence of international relations."

http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/history/fr/marcoPolo.htm

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Reviewed by Jonathan Lasser

      Readers who enjoy frightening themselves will enjoy Joe Hill's debut novel, Heart-Shaped Box. The plot suffers from some holes, the writing is invisible more than it is literary, and the story depends upon cheap sentimentalism-but taken together it's still stunningly effective, even if you know exactly what to expect. All of which raises one question: how exactly does that work?

     Near the end of the book, Joe Hill shares a rough definition of horror: "Horror was rooted in sympathy, after all, in understanding what it would be like to suffer the worst." (pp. 306-307) This theory provides a key to the transformation of horror writing from a cramped, obscure genre aimed largely at teenage boys to the driving force behind blockbuster authors including Stephen King, Clive Barker, and if this novel is any clue, Joe Hill.

     Most modern Horror writers trace their roots to H. P. Lovecraft, a short story writer for the pulp magazines in the early part of last century. Hill has read his Lovecraft-there's a sly reference on page 48, wherein the works of Charles Dexter Ward (a character from a Lovecraft story) make an appearance in semi-retired rock star Judas Coyne's personal library.

     Unlike Hill, Lovecraft believed that horror wasn't rooted in sympathy, but in antipathy. He opens his classic essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” a survey of the field, by stating that "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."

Modern readers may be distressed by Lovecraft's racially-charged stories, which tend to feature many "degenerate" creatures, half-human and half-fish, or the product of generations of inbreeding. Contemporary horror writers, even those who claim Lovecraft as a source, tend to avoid tales of incomprehensible cosmic forces, and instead concentrate on the shadow, in Jung's sense-the darkness within us, that we identify and suppress, often with negative consequences. In horror tales and ghost stories, suppressing the darkness within always leads to negative consequences.

     Stephen King's Carrie remains the canonical example of such a tale, wherein the ordinary insults and terrors of adolescence take on monstrous form. In this sense, modern horror writing is supremely moralistic: what most separates contemporary horror from Lovecraft's pulp is our ability to empathize with its protagonists, and the greatest triumph of the modern genre's champions is their ability to make us recognize ourselves in the heroes of these tales no matter how unlikely their circumstances: ordinary people, driven to extraordinary lengths in the battle for good to overcome evil.
     As moral tales, these stories require an imperfect hero, someone who has sinned. Enter Judas Coyne, former lead singer for a heavy metal band that has relied on the occult as part of its stage show and imagery, if nothing else. It may have been an act, but Jude has a library of creepy gifts from fans, including a snuff film, possession of which indirectly ended his marriage several years before the story begins.

     In promotional materials, Joe Hill describes Jude as "morally adrift." In his mid-fifties,   Jude lives with a twenty-something gothic ex-stripper, full of piercings and attitude. Jude calls her Georgia after her home state, to keep her in her place, though her real name is Marybeth and her stage name was Morphine. Given that this is a morality tale, it should be no surprise that Georgia was sexually abused as a child and has both a heart of gold and a will of iron. Jude does too, despite his gruff exterior, his rough childhood, and his two German Shepherds named Bon and Angus, just one of the many heavy metal references that Joe Hill works into the story.

     If the aging baddie with a daddy problem and his hot, tough-as-nails girlfriend don't strike the reader as stock characters, neither will the rest of the cast: the ingratiating assistant who just wants to be loved, for example, who asks Jude if he wishes to buy, via Internet auction, a ghost. Jude does, and in the mail comes the suit to which the dead man is attached.

     No reader should be surprised that Jude gets more than he bargained for with the suit, that Jude's daddy issues get worked out in an unconventional fashion, or that in some sense Jude can be said to have redeemed himself. What might surprise readers is how well all of this works, even though there's nothing new here.

What, then, makes this story work? What makes it genuinely creepy? In no small part, the story works because Joe Hill is an excellent writer and storyteller. The pacing works: most of the time, it's easy for the reader to imagine that he or she is half a step ahead of the story, but this builds anticipation and dread. And, even when the reader thinks he or she has the pieces figured out, there's always the question, "what happens next?" Even when you know where Heart-Shaped Box is going, it still carries you along for the ride. Similarly, Hill alternates intense scenes of the supernatural with spaces where the reader can relax, and let his or her guard down, so as to be lulled into the next fright. As makers of horror movies from Alien to Arachnophobia know, terror works best when alternating with laughter.

     Hill also draws the reader in with a wealth of detail, including arresting visual detail:

     The dead man was sitting two-thirds of the way down the corridor, in the Shaker chair on the left, his head lowered in thought. A drape of morning sunshine fell across where his legs should have been. They disappeared where they passed into the light. It gave him the look of a war veteran, his trousers ending in stumps, midway down his thighs. Below this splash of sunshine were his polished black loafers, with his black-stockinged feet stuck in them. Between his thighs and his shoes, the only legs that were visible were the legs of the chair, the wood a lustrous blond in the light. (p. 54)

Once the reader imagines the chair's legs visible where the ghost's legs fade away, the question "is this believable?" disappears. In practice, the reader believes.

     Beyond masterful pacing and specificity of language, the story contains its own internal logic of signs and symbols. Repeated, incantory phrases and images, like the ghosts with their eyes marked out, provide a structure for the story even when the rational structure falls short. Perhaps this is why the tale works better with stock characters than it could with more fully realized characters-those stereotypes provide a framework that can resonate with the reader. If so, it's not this story that resonates with the reader but with the larger story.

     But if Heart-Shaped Box is just a guitar pick, then what are the strings that Hill so expertly picks? In the promotional materials, Joe Hill writes that "almost every ghost story is really an expression of a very old-maybe ancient-idea about consumerism. That is, when you take possession of something, you're also taking possession of its past." That just might be one of the strings, but what really makes it all sing are the fundamental moral questions: If nobody's perfect, how do we choose sides? Is that only a function of who is telling the story? Isn't there a battle between good and evil? Don't we want good to win? At the least, the story's emotional effectiveness depends on the magical thinking that if we atone for the past, the future will be all right.

In this, the tale's morality is conventional-at times it's unapologetically sentimental-but it has to be, because Hill's horror is rooted in the reader's sympathy with the narrator. Lovecraft's unconventional morality depends on the notion that the universe is more horrifying than any but the insane can perceive, and his eldritch syntax underscores his belief in our inability to understand the world around us. Hill's language strives for the same transparency as does Stephen King's-no reader should ever stop to admire the carefully honed sentences, because to do so takes one out of the story, and compromises however fleetingly our empathetic link to the tale's protagonists.

     The illusion works, like so many illusions do, so long as it commands our attention. The reader who resists empathy, or who focuses on relentlessly logical deconstruction, will likely throw down Heart-Shaped Box and walk away, muttering that it's nothing but a conjurer's trick, some storytelling slight-of-hand but without real magic. But for the reader who doesn't mind playing the role of guitar in Joe Hill's capable hands, this tale contains more than a few pleasant shivers.

http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/mysteryreviews/fr/heartShapedBox_2.htm

Body Surfing by Anita Shreve

Body Surfing by Anita Shreve

Book review by Shawn Stufflebeam

     Anita Shreve's Body Surfing is an amazing novel, a real page-turner, and a triumph of character driven drama. After the first few pages I just about could not put this book down.
     The story follows young Sydney through her encounters with the wealthy Edwardses, at their New Hampshire beach home. She is there ostensibly to tutor their daughter Julie, but quickly becomes enmeshed in the family's affairs.

Plot is so often the fuel that fires a particularly gripping novel, that when I was finished I kept thinking, 'You know, not that much really happened here. How can I have been so caught up in this thing?"

     The truth of the matter is that quite a lot does happen over the course of this wonderful story, but much of it happens between the pages. Ms. Shreve has a gift for telling us just the tidbits we need about each character so that our imaginations instantly flesh out the rest. It's what she doesn't say that is often so compelling. A long silence or a glance from Mrs. Edwards speaks volumes about what's really going on in her head. Sydney looks around the dinner table, and just from the things that catch her eye you know precisely what she is thinking, and what scares her.

This is not an epic, but by the end of it I felt like I knew all seven of the main characters as well as people I've known my whole life. I kept thinking, 'Yeah so-and-so is just like that' and 'I know exactly how that feels - the nerve of that person!'

     And it is the kind of a tale that sticks with you; in the days after I finished Body Surfing, my mind kept wandering back to New England to visit. This is a hallmark of great stories - that they haunt you long after they're gone.

As a final note: my wife read the book right after I did, and had precisely the same reaction. In fact, the day she finished Body Surfing, we went to the bookstore and bought two more Anita Shreve novels. I highly recommend Body Surfing, and I am so grateful that it caught my eye - it is a great read by an exceptionally perceptive author.

http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/fiction/fr/bodySurfing.htm

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

Reviewed by Brenda Hadenfeldt 

     Good news, indeed: Kate Atkinson is back with another delectably intricate novel filled with suspense and converging storylines.

     As in her previous novels featuring private detective Jackson Brodie – Case Histories and One Good Turn - Atkinson has intertwined what first seem to be many separate stories, giving an added sense of mystery: you know all the characters will connect, but the how and why aren't always obvious; and the twists to get them there can make your head spin. Somehow, Atkinson keeps them all on track, and the pieces fit together even better in this book than in the earlier ones. Whether the intersections are coincidence or fate could be debated, but the Brodie books don't dwell on this. Nor should they.

     When Will There Be Good News? takes place about three years after One Good Turn. Jackson Brodie is now living in London and billing himself, with more than a hint of sarcasm, as a "security consultant." But he is never far from detective work, and his path leads him back to the stalwart Louise Monroe. Louise, a strong and interesting addition in One Good Turn, has been promoted to detective chief inspector and really comes into her own here, equal parts caring, surly, pragmatic, introspective, and cynical. Others in their colliding character collective include a criminal released after serving thirty years in prison; a now-grown woman who witnessed his shocking crimes when she was six; and a sharp, sixteen-year-old girl with a history of bad luck, currently working as a nanny for a doctor who mysteriously goes missing. An extensive and colorful supporting cast fleshes out the book.

     Luck, both good and bad, is one theme throughout – particularly for Jackson, who seems to swing between extremes, and Reggie the nanny, who has been through more by sixteen than most people in a lifetime. Marriage is another thread in the story, which offers a variety of characters' conjugal experiences.
     Perhaps most striking are the theme of memory and the skillful treatment of this theme. Atkinson incorporates memory in many different ways, from memory loss to living with difficult memories. Many of the characters have faced hard challenges, if not outright tragedies. They all respond and remember differently. One keeps an old photo hidden away. Another lives with her husband's memories of a past wife. One remembers pieces of a dirge or a Bible verse, another the writing on a postcard that arrived after the sender died. Their memories and thoughts inspire larger questions: What does it mean to be a victim? How does someone survive a violent crime and live a normal life? What is "normal" in such a case? It is better to remember or to forget?

In this sense especially, When Will There Be Good News? lives up to its title; many characters get a lot of bad news before the good comes. Some have to work hard to pull the good from out of the bad. And they do, with effects ranging from lump-in-the-throat poignancy to wickedly dark humor.

     So this is no stereotypical triumph-over-adversity tale. Rather, it's an entertaining mystery and a smart and thoughtful novel, leaving readers with the feeling of an adventure, a sense of closure, and a few broader issues to ponder.

http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/mysteryreviews/fr/goodNews.htm

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

Review From John M. Formy-Duval

     If you believe that Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, is right in his assertion that American writers “don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature” and that their "ignorance is restraining," do not bother to read David Wroblewski’s new American novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Why should you bother to read one of the very best novels of the year? Why should you be drawn into a world that challenges your imagination and intellect? One that conjures Hamlet out of the ether?

     The Hamlet connection permeates this novel. There’s a prologue and five parts. There are a mother and father, a son "crippled" by an inability to speak rather than an inability to make a decision. An uncle appears, the father dies under mysterious circumstances, and the boy is haunted by an apparition which says, "Remember me."
     In this, far and away the best debut novel of the year, David Wroblewski creates a beautifully imagined world filled with people who grapple with real issues. There is even a dog, Almondine, who shares her thoughts with us. Almondine fills a special role, while the other dogs function as a Greek chorus, giving us another, more dispassionate view of the story. Within the context of this excellent book, this seems to be perfectly normal. This may be fiction, but it has the feel and punch of Life.

     Gar and Trudy appear to be living an idyllic life raising dogs, which are meant to be different. These dogs are anthropomorphized as Gar attempts to breed dogs that seem to demonstrate cognitive abilities beyond the norm. A son Edgar is born, and we soon learn that all is not as it appears to be. "The baby had no voice. It could not make a sound." Taught sign language early, Edgar grows strong and smart, surrounded by a supportive community and parents who love him. He learns about dogs: "A litter," Edgar’s father once told him, "is like an x-ray of its parents and its parents’ parents, but an x-ray that takes years to develop, and even then it’s faint. The more x-rays you have the better the picture." So it is with our emerging picture of Edgar. A snapshot here and there and eventually a complete picture emerges, one that is also dependent on his grandfather, father, mother, and what they taught him.

     Relationships begin to change subtly when Edgar’s uncle Claude (!) arrives, fresh from being "inside" for a spell. There are things about him that Edgar does not understand. Then Gar dies, apparently of a heart attack. Edgar feels responsible, and, unable to tell the operator who or where he is, he is deeply conflicted. Gar’s death sets off a series of events that compound the tragedy.

     While Edgar cannot speak to the world around him, humans and dogs, except through sign language, he speaks eloquently to us. His story is one of deep psychological insights told in a manner that grabs our attention and refuses to let go. The story pushes inexorably toward a logical and undeserved but appropriate conclusion. "Life was a swarm of accidents waiting in the treetops, descending upon any living thing that passed, ready to eat them alive….You clung to the happiest accidents–the rest you let float by."

    Do not be put off by the length of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. It is a grand saga and very readable. The language is poetic, the descriptions remarkable, never hackneyed. The plot is complicated, but it all fits together quite nicely. Rather than a summer read, it is the perfect book to read while one is curled up before the fireplace, the snow swirling outside, for it should be read in great chunks of time rather than snippets here and there for it deserves the reader’s complete attention.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle has garnered well-deserved attention from all the major reviews, including a rave by Stephen King.

http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/fiction/fr/edgarSawtelle.htm