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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
Nice character development, solid writing, decent plot. But in the end, what is the author trying to say? The story builds up... then goes poof. Deflates like a sad balloon a month after the birthday party.
You don't notice specifically until near the end, when the author basically points it out by hitting you over the head with it: neither main character has any volition or agency. Life just happens to them. We have two very different people, on different sides of the world, from different circumstances who behave similarly, unthinkingly. The journalist "didn't worry that the stories he wrote might hurt someone." And Bogdan also just sort of did things without being concerned about the consequences. So life happens to all people regardless of their advantages or disadvantages; people can be thoughtless no matter where they are from... Fortune is blind. I thought there should have been a more complex and interesting resolution to the story.
You don't notice specifically until near the end, when the author basically points it out by hitting you over the head with it: neither main character has any volition or agency. Life just happens to them. We have two very different people, on different sides of the world, from different circumstances who behave similarly, unthinkingly. The journalist "didn't worry that the stories he wrote might hurt someone." And Bogdan also just sort of did things without being concerned about the consequences. So life happens to all people regardless of their advantages or disadvantages; people can be thoughtless no matter where they are from... Fortune is blind. I thought there should have been a more complex and interesting resolution to the story.
I can't recommend Steve Yarbrough's new novel, THE UNMADE WORLD, highly enough. I was already a fan of his novels before I read this one. He writes the best kind of literary fiction, with gorgeous sentences and surprising insights to savor on every page. The Unmade World is riveting--part crime novel, part mystery, and a heartbreaking love story. It's a deeply compassionate book that moved me enormously. Read it and then, if you haven't, read his others.
I've now read two novels by Yarbrough, and if I can characterize him based on those two, I'd say he writes about characters who have experienced great loss and must go through the motions of life until, by the grace of the Universe, another reason to live materializes.
Richard Brennan, an investigative journalist, loses his wife and daughter in an auto accident. Bogdan Baranowski loses his business, and later, his sense of self, as he descends into a life of crime. Their stories are intertwined. They must work through their loss/guilt, and find their own reasons to carry on. If they should ever meet, the results may be explosive.
At the end of the day, we seem sometimes to wander aimlessly through this world. But if we're lucky, we discover those mercies that make life seem like more than an empty exercise.
Richard Brennan, an investigative journalist, loses his wife and daughter in an auto accident. Bogdan Baranowski loses his business, and later, his sense of self, as he descends into a life of crime. Their stories are intertwined. They must work through their loss/guilt, and find their own reasons to carry on. If they should ever meet, the results may be explosive.
At the end of the day, we seem sometimes to wander aimlessly through this world. But if we're lucky, we discover those mercies that make life seem like more than an empty exercise.
What I appreciated most about this novel, the second now from this author that I've read, is that it subverts a number of expectations that I initially believed it was setting up—expectations that would have made this novel much more conventional and overall less interesting and special. This is not a murder mystery/criminal procedural, despite mimicking the shape throughout part 2; our main character does not enter into the relationship that we begin to suspect can "save" him from the darkness he's found himself trapped in since the death of wife and daughter; and Richard doesn't, by the end, confront the man whose actions resulted in their death (the fact that he doesn't even recognize Bogdan in that brief moment when he finally lays eyes on him? Perfect). It was refreshing to read a novel that surprised me in these. It was, quite frankly, honest to experience. I started to fear by the end that Richard was going to be delivered his opportunity to confront Bodgan (however contrived this opportunity might have been) but I should have trusted the author more, considering how appreciative I'd been of his handling of the conclusion of part 2.
"It seems unlikely that the American journalist saw him long enough to retain an image. But Bogdan knows he did, that someplace on the far side of North America, his otherwise forgettable face is the locus of grief. Tonight, he can feel it more strongly than ever. Somewhere in California he takes center stage in another man's nightmare."
Really nicely drawn characters. Interesting plot. Nothing too flashy. Just a great story with a sort of quiet tension. I liked it a lot.
Really nicely drawn characters. Interesting plot. Nothing too flashy. Just a great story with a sort of quiet tension. I liked it a lot.