Scan barcode
elise_cirone's review
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
gerhard's review
5.0
To maintain such wonder, joy and discovery for over 600 pages, and then to hit the reader with a sledgehammer of an ending it feels like your heart is going to burst from bittersweet agony … Christopher Bollen is either a saint or a devil. Maybe both.
It is a tried-and-tested formula whereby an author casts his omniscient gaze on a specific community and its inhabitants, warts and all. Here Bollen inhabits the real island setting of Orient in New York with a cast of long-time residents and itinerant wannabee newcomers fleeing the rat race of Manhattan for a perceived bucolic idyll.
However, every Eden has to have its apple and its primordial temptation, and in the case of Orient, this is ultimately its own hubris: that it can exist apart from the rest of the world, unaffected by the pull of the tide of world affairs.
Anyone who has ever lived in a small community like that of Orient will recognise the delicate picture that Bollen paints, from the diehards of the Orient Historical Board, who are committed to preserving a nostalgic heritage that they do not realise is so rose-tinted as to be ultimately unattainable, to the influx of immigrant artistes and yuppie property owners, who conveniently ignore the fact that nature is red in tooth
and claw...
Nature’s vengeance soon descends upon Orient when the prototypical Muldoon family is incinerated in their picture-postcard Orient home after a mysterious fire. Ironically, the father campaigned against connecting the island to Manhattan’s water infrastructure, thus limiting the resources available to the local fire department.
Orient’s collective paranoia soon focuses on one of their own sons and his decision to take in a delinquent teenager from New York, who also happens to be gay. A lot of the perspicacity of this novel derives from Bollen casting a queer eye over the affairs of Orient; this places it firmly in the rising firmament of post-gay fiction where sexuality is more a single element than a determinant of the plot. Let alone character. Or destiny.
Bollen has a lot to say about artistic value and integrity in the modern age, particularly as it relates to that much-maligned entity of ‘modern art’. He casts an equally critical eye on family dynamics in the age of constant connectivity, where cellphones and the Internet have eroded true intimacy.
This bounteous, generous and heartfelt novel consistently maintains a very delicate balance between darkness and light, epiphany and despair. It is perfectly paced and calibrated, with a wide range of fully-rounded characters that jump from the page in messy quotidian splendour.
Nothing much happens for so many pages and what seems like an awfully long time, but then the ending is such a gasp-inducing rearrangement of all the myriad plot elements, a lot of which I took for granted up to that point, that the light it casts is coruscating. It lays bare the beating, bleeding heart of this extraordinary novel.
It is a tried-and-tested formula whereby an author casts his omniscient gaze on a specific community and its inhabitants, warts and all. Here Bollen inhabits the real island setting of Orient in New York with a cast of long-time residents and itinerant wannabee newcomers fleeing the rat race of Manhattan for a perceived bucolic idyll.
However, every Eden has to have its apple and its primordial temptation, and in the case of Orient, this is ultimately its own hubris: that it can exist apart from the rest of the world, unaffected by the pull of the tide of world affairs.
Anyone who has ever lived in a small community like that of Orient will recognise the delicate picture that Bollen paints, from the diehards of the Orient Historical Board, who are committed to preserving a nostalgic heritage that they do not realise is so rose-tinted as to be ultimately unattainable, to the influx of immigrant artistes and yuppie property owners, who conveniently ignore the fact that nature is red in tooth
and claw...
Nature’s vengeance soon descends upon Orient when the prototypical Muldoon family is incinerated in their picture-postcard Orient home after a mysterious fire. Ironically, the father campaigned against connecting the island to Manhattan’s water infrastructure, thus limiting the resources available to the local fire department.
Orient’s collective paranoia soon focuses on one of their own sons and his decision to take in a delinquent teenager from New York, who also happens to be gay. A lot of the perspicacity of this novel derives from Bollen casting a queer eye over the affairs of Orient; this places it firmly in the rising firmament of post-gay fiction where sexuality is more a single element than a determinant of the plot. Let alone character. Or destiny.
Bollen has a lot to say about artistic value and integrity in the modern age, particularly as it relates to that much-maligned entity of ‘modern art’. He casts an equally critical eye on family dynamics in the age of constant connectivity, where cellphones and the Internet have eroded true intimacy.
This bounteous, generous and heartfelt novel consistently maintains a very delicate balance between darkness and light, epiphany and despair. It is perfectly paced and calibrated, with a wide range of fully-rounded characters that jump from the page in messy quotidian splendour.
Nothing much happens for so many pages and what seems like an awfully long time, but then the ending is such a gasp-inducing rearrangement of all the myriad plot elements, a lot of which I took for granted up to that point, that the light it casts is coruscating. It lays bare the beating, bleeding heart of this extraordinary novel.
More...