The first fiction post for the blog shall, naturally, be reviewing a debut novel. Today we're looking at Anthony Doerr's first full length novel, About Grace.
Background
You might be familiar with this author, especially if you're a lover of literary fiction. Doerr's novel All The Light We Cannot See won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction and was critically acclaimed.
Given this, how does Doerr’s debut shape up?
Synopsis
Where do I even begin with the synopsis? Normally, I like to give readers a brief overview of the story. But I can’t do that without my opinion getting in the way. Instead, I'll provide you with the copy from the HarperCollins website (all credit goes to the appropriate individuals):
Growing up in Alaska, young David Winkler is crippled by his dreams. At nine, he dreams a man is decapitated by a passing truck on the path outside his family’s home. The next day, unable to prevent it, he witnesses an exact replay of his dream in real life. The premonitions keep coming, unstoppably. He sleepwalks during them, bringing catastrophe into his reach.
Then, as unstoppable as a vision, he falls in love, at the supermarket (exactly as he already dreamed) with Sandy. They flee south, landing in Ohio, where their daughter Grace is born. And then the visions of Grace’s death begin for Winkler, as their waterside home is inundated. Plagued by the same horrific images of Grace drowning, when the floods come, he cannot face his destiny and flees.
He beaches on a remote Caribbean island, where he works as a handyman, chipping away at his doubts and hopes, never knowing whether Grace survived the flood or met the doom he foretold. After two decades, he musters the strength to find out.
Okay…that’s an interesting description…maybe. I can safely say that I’ve never experienced a blurb like that before. What else does he have going for him?
The Good
Doerr's command of the English language is impeccable and frankly peerless. One of the true negative side effects of the Internet is the proliferation of terrible writing. Anybody can publish anything, and no the irony of my complaint is not lost on the guy who can publish anything on his blog. I might very well be one of those terrible writers, but my argument still stands: good writing is rare, and this fellow takes it up a notch.
Take a look at this opening sentence.
He made his way through the concourse and stopped by a window to watch a man with two orange wands wave a jet into its gate.
Images are immediately conjured; a complete mental movie is formed in your head. Many don't seem to realise that this is the primary goal of writing.
Without hesitation, Doerr’s writing plunges us into the story. And unlike the common advice that the writer needs to 'grab' the reader right away, this opening sentence isn't particularly grabbing. Rather, it is aesthetically pleasing. Words flow off this book’s page naturally and with ease. This is how storyteller commands his audience.
You aren't grabbed, you are pulled, very gently I might add. Float down the river and experience the beauty of the jungle.
But the jungle can get ugly fast.
The Bad
With one weird-ass metaphor under my belt already and a synopsis I refused to comment on, we come to the negative aspects of this book.
What part of this book didn’t work for me?
Why, only the entire story.
Yeah, that's right. The entire story is ludicrous; the rock on which this beautiful text is built erodes dangerously fast. The excerpt blurb above masks the weirdness of the story well. But the fact is crystal clear: The protagonist, Winkler (a dumb name, but that's a minor comment) has dreams so vivid that at best they are graphic movies and at worst prophecies. And at no point do we learn why Winkler has these prophetic dreams. He just has them.
Now, it's not like Doerr is trying to convince you that everyone in this story can do it. Only Winkler can have these dreams. And Doerr doesn't gloss over the fact that other people can't do it. In fact, the whole shaky plot is built upon this dubious dreaming skill. For instance, Winkler dreams that his daughter will drown and starts to dangerously sleepwalk, terrifying Sandy (more on her in a minute). She thinks he's insane and tries to get him to go to a doctor. But no! Winkler refuses. Who shall believe such a thing? He bravely refuses like an idiot. Sandy, naturally, becomes convinced her new husband is insane and endangering their daughter.
This is just one of many examples where Doerr commits the most elemental mistake a storyteller can make: you wind up disliking Winkler's actions and you subsequently don't want him to win.
Not only can the protagonist act as a dreaming prophet that nobody understands, he acts on his dreams which can at times seem out of his control. So let's review the plot as best I understood it.
Winkler dreams about meeting Sandy in the supermarket-->Has an affair with her (yeah, she's married)-->Gets her pregnant-->Convinces her to flee with him to Cleveland, Ohio (WHY?!?!? I've lived in Cleveland and I can assure you that its not a great story setting)-->Has more prophetic dreams while he strings Sandy along-->Can't take it and flees to St. Vincent-->Works as an unskilled labourer for 25(!) years-->Wonders if his daughter is alive and sets out to find her-->Tries several Grace Winklers and comes to rest on a Grace Winkler (not his daughter) in Idaho-->Breaks into her house and flees while she calls the police-->Abandons his broken down car in the middle of nowhere-->Hikes and hitchhikes to Alaska-->Nearly freezes to death and is saved by Naahilyah (a young girl he watched grow up in St. Vincent who moved to Alaska)-->learns that Grace is alive and that Sandy's widower husband is also still alive complete with Winkler having a grandson-->Meets Grace and she hates him-->Ends the story in Alaska.
Wow. And my sneering description doesn't cover the fact that Winkler has an unhealthy obsession with water. Many times throughout the book, the reader is treated to Winkler's specialty of studying snowflakes. And when the dreams strike, Winkler practically becomes insane. He sleepwalks, he stalks Naahilyah every day after dreaming she'd drown (and he does wind up saving her), he writes creepy letters to Sandy after fleeing to St. Vincent, and of course, when it comes to finding Grace, he becomes even more of a Don Quixote. I'm sure Doerr thought he was writing an epic romantic hero, but instead, Winkler is a delusional romantic.
In the course of trying to find Grace/Sandy, Winkler meets a bunch of strange characters, breaks into the house of a lookalike Grace and then flees because of his own misunderstanding. And of course, this semi-old man makes a string of bad decisions resulting in him nearly freezing to death in Alaska. Why do we want this guy to win? And bear in mind, he's doing this in the name of a daughter who was born out of wedlock with a married woman who didn't really like him anyway.
Ironically, the character we're supposed to hate the most winds up being the most likeable. Sandy's husband Herman is described as a boring man who can't conceive a child with Sandy. When we finally meet Herman in person, he's understanding, forgiving, and compassionate both to Grace (who is already divorced with a child) and his grandson.
The final nail in the coffin for Winkler’s arc, such as it is, is Grace's reaction. Endings to books are critically important. You can't have the book be great and bungle the ending. In fact, there's an interesting story from a scientific study about this very fact.
People who listened to a pleasant recording were suddenly forced to listen to a jarring scratching noise at the end of the piece. All of the participants said that they hated the piece of music afterwards even though they said they enjoyed it at the beginning. Books are no different.
After Winkler getting a married woman pregnant, fleeing to Ohio with her, pretty much going crazy and spending twenty-five years obsessing about the daughter, Grace hates him (for good reason). It means that everything was a waste of time. Winkler threw away his life...all because of some ability to dream prophecies he never really understands.
Summary
Doerr is a master writer, but not a master storyteller. It's strange because this book runs in opposition to most people’s complaints about books. People usually complain that though they like the story and the characters, the writing style is annoying. Commercial fiction in general has this problem. The cascade of absurd romance novels, dumb detective stories, and ludicrous sci-fi trace most of their problems back to the fluffy writing underpinning the plot.
Literary fiction has the opposite problem. The writing is fantastic, but the plot is so wafer thin that you're distracted by the shiny use of careful adjectives.
Doerr's next novel, All The Light We Cannot See, marries beautiful language with a good story to good effect. This book on the other hand…was an experience.