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3.4 AVERAGE
3.4 AVERAGE
Well, I read about 100 pages and gave up. O'Nan was trying for a unique narrative, told from the point of view of a dead teenager, but i just couldn't get into his rhythm. Alas.
This book is a great ghost story: it's more about guilt and identity than ghosts and haunting. The Kyle transformation, the Kyle's mom transformation, and the awful attempt to normalize the tragic all fit together creating a beautiful portrait regret.
O'Nan allows the roads in the town to become characters. The 44 sneaks and pulls throughout the novel, a more menacing plot device than any of the un-dead populating Avon.
O'Nan allows the roads in the town to become characters. The 44 sneaks and pulls throughout the novel, a more menacing plot device than any of the un-dead populating Avon.
Haunting in both senses of the word. Melancholy and mournful. A lovely, beautifully written elegy.
The Night Country takes place on Halloween, three ghosts have returned to haunt the living. Toe, Marko and Danielle were killed in a terrible automobile accident near midnight on Halloween night. Two others, Tim and Kyle, survived the crash. Kyle came out a walking vegetable, not even a shadow of his former self. Tim lost his best friends and girlfriend in the crash and though he remains friends with Kyle, he's more like a caretaker to his once rebellious buddy.
The police officer, Brooks, who was first on the scene of the crash the year before is also haunted by the memories of that scene. Though he was an expert in accident reconstruction he couldn't get this particular accident out of his mind. He is host to a terrible secret.
Though it's pretty easy to guess the secrets and deduce the direction of the plot, the story more than makes up for it. As horrible as it is I wanted to be in that car with them, to ride with them until the gory end.
It was a very depressing tale of teenage exuberance, the regular teenage acts, gone wrong. Lives wrecked in a single moment. I don't know if I should have been listening to it, because there were so many parallels to RL, when I was trying really to escape, but for some reason I always end up reading books that follow my moods a little. Just like I read the Labrador Pact and cried at that. This was the same thing, my thoughts would often devolve as I was listening and I was teary eyed through a lot of it.
Still, it was a good story, especially for the end of October.
The police officer, Brooks, who was first on the scene of the crash the year before is also haunted by the memories of that scene. Though he was an expert in accident reconstruction he couldn't get this particular accident out of his mind. He is host to a terrible secret.
Though it's pretty easy to guess the secrets and deduce the direction of the plot, the story more than makes up for it. As horrible as it is I wanted to be in that car with them, to ride with them until the gory end.
It was a very depressing tale of teenage exuberance, the regular teenage acts, gone wrong. Lives wrecked in a single moment. I don't know if I should have been listening to it, because there were so many parallels to RL, when I was trying really to escape, but for some reason I always end up reading books that follow my moods a little. Just like I read the Labrador Pact and cried at that. This was the same thing, my thoughts would often devolve as I was listening and I was teary eyed through a lot of it.
Still, it was a good story, especially for the end of October.
So good! Not a book that, I think, I would have picked up on my own -- except the title is great -- so I'm glad, as ever, of book club.
The inner lives of the characters was great but the writing, the evocation of time of year and holiday and time of life and mood, was outstanding.
The book might not have been so stirring if I didn't know its suburban Connecticut setting so well -- a college boyfriend lived around the corner -- if I couldn't picture the trees, the river, the houses, the hopelessness as intimately as I do.
The inner lives of the characters was great but the writing, the evocation of time of year and holiday and time of life and mood, was outstanding.
The book might not have been so stirring if I didn't know its suburban Connecticut setting so well -- a college boyfriend lived around the corner -- if I couldn't picture the trees, the river, the houses, the hopelessness as intimately as I do.