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A review by jeanm333
Enon by Paul Harding
2.0
Just because he won a Pulitzer Prize for his first book "Tinkers," I guess Paul Harding's editors couldn't bear to tell him his second novel didn't work.
The story is about a guy named Charlie Crosby, (grandson of the narrator in Tinkers) whose 13 year-old daughter is killed on her bicycle and his wife leaves him. That's about all the plot there is. The rest of the book is Charlie wandering around, having fantasies about his daughter, slowly falling into a pit of self-abuse (drugs) and self-pity. Yuck!
Reading this just after my writing coach told me that a series of events does not a novel make, it was a perfect illustration of what not to do.
The language is eloquent and lovely, but it's still not a novel.
I picked it up initially with great expectations, putting it down after I saw it was about grief for the death of a child. I always have trouble with this subject matter, but I thought maybe there was something redeeming about it. So I picked it up again and read more (it's a short book). Nope. Nothing more interesting than more grief, more hallucinations, more drugs.
There is one small part near the end (minor spoiler) where Charlie seems to see something vague that he describes it only as "a sound no human ear can hear".
And what happened to Charlie's wife?
Several reviewers said it was a good description of grief, but, again, that's not a novel. I want to read something that will inspire me, make me laugh, give me hope. Life is too short to read stuff like this, even if it's a short book.
The story is about a guy named Charlie Crosby, (grandson of the narrator in Tinkers) whose 13 year-old daughter is killed on her bicycle and his wife leaves him. That's about all the plot there is. The rest of the book is Charlie wandering around, having fantasies about his daughter, slowly falling into a pit of self-abuse (drugs) and self-pity. Yuck!
Reading this just after my writing coach told me that a series of events does not a novel make, it was a perfect illustration of what not to do.
The language is eloquent and lovely, but it's still not a novel.
I picked it up initially with great expectations, putting it down after I saw it was about grief for the death of a child. I always have trouble with this subject matter, but I thought maybe there was something redeeming about it. So I picked it up again and read more (it's a short book). Nope. Nothing more interesting than more grief, more hallucinations, more drugs.
There is one small part near the end (minor spoiler) where Charlie seems to see something vague that he describes it only as "a sound no human ear can hear".
And what happened to Charlie's wife?
Several reviewers said it was a good description of grief, but, again, that's not a novel. I want to read something that will inspire me, make me laugh, give me hope. Life is too short to read stuff like this, even if it's a short book.