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A review by samhouston
Enon by Paul Harding
4.0
The opening paragraph of Paul Harding’s Enon is one of the most intriguing ones I have read in a long while:
“Most men in my family make widows of their wives and orphans of their children. I am the exception. My only child, Kate, was struck and killed by a car while riding her bicycle home from the beach one afternoon in September, a year ago. She was thirteen. My wife, Susan, and I separated soon afterward.”
Charlie Crosby was a happy man the year before he spoke those words. Now, one year later, he is lucky to be alive after having suffered through the kind of agonizing grief and despair that could easily have claimed his life. And it’s not as if he didn’t try very hard to do the job on himself.
Harding has written an insightful exploration of grief and how it forever changes those who suffer its devastating pain. Charlie handled it (poorly) by giving up on life and becoming addicted to painkillers; his wife handled it (equally poorly) by almost immediately giving up on her marriage and permanently running home to her parents. Who is to say they would not have done the same if faced with the prospect of suddenly having to face life without the bright, funny little girl around whom that life was centered?
Enon can at times be difficult to read. Sometimes that’s because of its subject matter – it’s always hard to read about the self-destruction of a character as sympathetic as Charlie Crosby – and sometimes because Harding’s account of Charlie’s weird dreams and delusions simply go on too long. But this is easily forgiven in a novel that that takes such a head-on approach to one of the most painful experiences there is: the loss of a child. Paul Harding packs a lot into this short (238 pages) novel.
“Most men in my family make widows of their wives and orphans of their children. I am the exception. My only child, Kate, was struck and killed by a car while riding her bicycle home from the beach one afternoon in September, a year ago. She was thirteen. My wife, Susan, and I separated soon afterward.”
Charlie Crosby was a happy man the year before he spoke those words. Now, one year later, he is lucky to be alive after having suffered through the kind of agonizing grief and despair that could easily have claimed his life. And it’s not as if he didn’t try very hard to do the job on himself.
Harding has written an insightful exploration of grief and how it forever changes those who suffer its devastating pain. Charlie handled it (poorly) by giving up on life and becoming addicted to painkillers; his wife handled it (equally poorly) by almost immediately giving up on her marriage and permanently running home to her parents. Who is to say they would not have done the same if faced with the prospect of suddenly having to face life without the bright, funny little girl around whom that life was centered?
Enon can at times be difficult to read. Sometimes that’s because of its subject matter – it’s always hard to read about the self-destruction of a character as sympathetic as Charlie Crosby – and sometimes because Harding’s account of Charlie’s weird dreams and delusions simply go on too long. But this is easily forgiven in a novel that that takes such a head-on approach to one of the most painful experiences there is: the loss of a child. Paul Harding packs a lot into this short (238 pages) novel.