Customer Reviews

About Grace

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I was initially conflicted over purchasing this book based on some of the reviews I read; however, I could not resist the synopsis and had to find out for myself what this book was all about.

I did not find this work to be disappointing in the least. I would describe the book as haunting, OBSESSIVE, and tender, wrapped in cloaks of great love and forgiveness. It is an amazing physical and emotional journey of a man with an unusual gift that often torments him and plunges him into the throes of despair and ruin. At the same time, his eyes are opened to the little yet significant miracles that surround him everyday.

This book is written in a lovely prose with painstaking descriptions of articles of everyday life. It is continuously unsettling and maintains the reader's attention to the very end. A very fine work and highly recommended!

In this highly symbolical novel, author Anthony Doerr boldly poses metaphysical questions about life, death, the human condition, and the ties that inevitably bind families together. Doerr has a beautifully structured style, and the narrative of About Grace is full of some of the most spectacular imagery, but the meaning behind the tale is often shrouded in the abstract and the mysterious. Memory, dreams, water, and the inescapable lust for life form the thematic core of this novel as David Winkler, the often-embattled main protagonist of the story, voluntarily exiles himself far away from his family and the life he is familiar with.

David has a terrible problem. A chronic sleepwalker and a gifted hydrologist, he dreams about things before they happen, and the dreams are often terrible portents to death and disaster. He dreams of a man getting hit by a bus, he dreams he's on an airplane, returning home after twenty-five years, and dreams he's on an island dreaming of the future. But when he dreams that he will inadvertently kill his daughter Grace, while trying to save her in a flood, he becomes obsessed with protecting her. He sees Grace suffocating in his arms and realizes that his dreams are ordained perhaps by chance, or choice, or the complexities of some unfathomably large pattern.

Fearing Grace's death, Winkler leaves her and his wife Sandy behind and jumps on a ship that is headed to the Caribbean in an attempt to stop the dream from becoming reality. During his twenty-five year exile, David writes obsessive letters to Sandy begging to find out whether Grace is still alive, and is befriended by two Chilean exiles Felix and Soma, whose daughter Naaliyah comes to support him in unexpected and surprising ways.

Winkler becomes a reclusive island hermit who is wracked by guilt at what he has done. He goes from being a confident weatherman with a family to a type of disparate lost soul, where he lives his days and nights struggling against sleep, time and guilt - existing only for a flicker of hope that his daughter is still alive. He ekes out a living doing trivial jobs, working on construction sites, and relying on the good-hearted generosity of others.

Winkler eventually returns to the United States in search of redemption, forgiveness, and to find out whether Grace is still alive. The journey he embarks on takes him on an epic road trip across continental United States, to the blistery wintry darkness of northern Alaska, and back to Anchorage where his life journey started all those years earlier. Doerr cleverly likens Winker's experiences to the natural world. Winkler is a scientist obsessed with snowflakes and other forms of water, but he is also a man who is unmistakably human and frail. And like the snowflakes he studies, he is remarkably resilient to the world around him. David discovers that life is just like the ice crystals he studies - the basic design is so icily repeated and unerringly conforming. The filigreed blossoms, the microscopic stars have a ghastly inevitability; both the crystals and humans cannot escape their embedded blueprints.

Whether he is describing the intricate arms of these snowflakes or the unending beauty of a tropical sunset, Doerr's powers of description are formidable and his ability to evoke the passions of the ever-changing natural world are unsurpassed. About Grace is a powerful story about family - "family is truth, struggle, retribution and time" - and also the ability to forgive. Through the power of redemption, David is able to better understand the meaning of life and more fully appreciate the beauty of the natural world that constantly encompasses us. Mike Leonard December 04.

I just finished this novel on a trip back from Phoenix, and I have to say not only the style and description, but the plot itself grabbed me. Unlike other reviews here, I found nothing plodding about the story. I found it riveting, and full of surprises. I'm a big fan of Japanese author Haruki Murakami, and I found a numbeer of similarities in both the beauty of the language, as well thematic and plot. There are elements of a surreal sort of journey and a search for a missing life that spans across thousands of miles. Doerr does a great job of shifting his tale between several key time periods in the life of David Winkler, the main character of the story. This is a brilliant novel, and I plan to share it with friends.

After Anthony Doerr's stunning short story debut with "The Shell Collector" (Scribner), the gifted young author has made a beautifully seamless transition to novelist with his exquisite new book, "About Grace" (Scribner). Mr. Doerr again intriguingly integrates the natural world and the human spirit with his signature beautifully poetic prose. Fiction and scientific fact are elegantly combined to raise our awareness of the wonder in much of our everyday lives that is too often unobserved. His use of story is especially compelling, pulling the reader along, completely captive.

We will surely hear a lot more from this talented young writer in future years. Meanwhile, his most recent gift, "About Grace," is exceptional.

Hal Eastman, Director, Easlas Trust

I think this is a book of rare excellence.

This book is for people who are pensive and thoughtful (is that redundant?). Its a wonderful trip into the detailed moods, hopes and fears of its main protagonist.

The style of Doerr is neither regular nor standardized, but it takes on a quality of aimlessly floating along a stream. But to my mind, this does *not make the story boring or uninteresting, but seems to do the opposite.

The story does not need fast-paced hollywood action, as its the emotions and thoughts of the characters which fascinate.

Doerr is almost more of a poet than a novelist, as he captures all the nuances of each character reaction.

Go read it!

When my friend Jen loaned me this book, she was very unsure if I'd like it. A major piece of the book involves danger to a small child, and she's always nervous that I will hate any book in which kids are hurt.

OK - sometimes that feels true - I can't help but project a "What If" onto my own kids - but I told her that if I have some connection to at least one of the characters - I can make it through just about anything. I don't even have to like the character - I just need some reason to hang in there through the end of the book.

I don't know if I liked the main character of "About Grace". David Winkler is one of the most disconnected human beings I've ever read about. He seems able to study and show interest in pieces of the natural world (water, snowflakes, cold) but when it comes to relating to other people - he seems almost a total loss. He proves to be a very interesting combination of tireless worker - he can do any sort of mindless labor for hours on end - and total drifter. In most of the major stages of his life - he is unable to make choices for himself - he lets other people, sometimes total strangers, make decisions for him.

He can't seem to connect completely to his wife, his child, his best friends...and yet he'll stay in the homes of strangers, listen to intimate details of their lives. He cannot seem to find any sort of balance - any "normal" way to prioritize relationships or tasks.

When he fears he may let something happen to his baby daughter (premonitions) - he removes himself from her life...for 23 years. He's not even sure she's still alive and worries endlessly about it - but doesn't take even the most rudimentary steps to find out.

After 23 years, when he finally manages to get to a place in his life (or maybe his mind) where he can actually take some action to find out if Grace is dead or alive, he deludes himself into thinking it will be easy to be a part of her life again, that he will be welcomed with open arms.

"Along those miles, and the miles to come, he crossed and recrossed a thousand reinventions of his daughter. Grace as a housewife, apron lashed to her hips, biscuit dough drying on her fingers. Maybe a tiny granddaughter, polite, madly pleased, some pureed squash smeared across her cheeks, pushing back from the table. Grandfather, she would say, and curtsey, and giggle. Grandfather, like a father who had succeeded so long and so long he'd been promoted."

I found myself shaking my head at the idea that a father who had never really been a part of his child's life would think he'd be hailed as a conquering hero when he finally decided to make contact.

And then...his inability to handle the smallest details. "He bent, and drank, and drank again. Lightning touched a tree not a half mile from him, and it made a profound popping like the sound of water being poured into a deep-fryer. When he finally pulled back from the river, kneeling on the bank, he realized his glasses had been taken from his face."

He drifts through the world for weeks, unable to see, and when he finally gets new glasses (through no action of his own) he in childishly delighted. "To see again - to discern a tree or face or cloud with an acceptable level of clarity - was the smallest kind of revival, a tiny breakthrough, but enough to start happiness in his heart - the joy of recognizing things, an improvement in his relationship with the world."

So I don't know if I liked this frustrating man...but I did form a connection with him. Maybe it was just my desire to see him repair what he could of the disjointedness of his life...maybe it was the small pieces in time when he seemed to show (or at least experience) emotion towards those he professed to love.

"...Winkler had been grateful all his life that he had been given that moment with her (his mother), maybe one or two complete minutes, he and the animals and his mother, the only person who had ever really understood him, and he imagined he could see the animals taking her with them, solemnly and delicately, escorting the life out of her, something gauzy and illuminated, like a jar full of fireflies, or the flame of a candle behind a curtain, her soul, perhaps, or something beyond words, and carrying it with them back into the walls of the building, heading for the roof."

Now that I read that, though, he seems only to experience people in terms of nature. The same again when he is standing at the gravestone of a woman he loved.

"A ladybug scaled the D in her name. Her life represented in a two-inch etched hyphen. A breeze came up and passed over the stones and spirit houses and ascended the hillside into the spruce, and pushed higher still, to the patches of tundra, and the still-melting fields of snow, stirring the tiny new blooms of avens and saxifrage, tucked into the highest rocks, starting their summer yellows and purples."

While still very detached, the writing is at times lovely. The descriptions of anything found in nature are both detailed and evocative. Doerr's descriptions of snow and snowflakes paint incredibly beautiful pictures...at times I could practically smell the snow in the air.

There was not enough to make me like Winkler...but I suppose at the end, what I felt for this incredibly flawed character, was pity.

"Winkler was sixty years old. He wore oversized glasses; he had liver spots on the back of his hands. He had been a gardener at a two-star inn for twenty-five years and now he worked at a Lens Crafters in the Fifth Avenue Mall, making $7.65 an hour."

A sad book, about an almost wasted life. One worth reading about, even if understanding is impossible.

If you've stood in a snowy meadow on a star-filled night and marveled at its stillness and beauty, or ever sensed a deep connection to the wind as it hit your face, then you will appreciate this book. It is filled with life. It is filled with thousands of moments we all experience, but rarely stop to appreciate.

About Grace is a beautiful book about a very ordinary man, David Winkler. It is in his humanity that I was able to identify and relate. One aspect of his life that is extraordinary, are the vivid dreams that come to haunt him in his waking hours. It is in the struggle to deal with these premonitions that we see the frailty of life, the strength of human will, and the power of love.

Anthony Doerr's book may stop you mid-sentence to marvel at what is being said. More likely it will stop you mid-sentence to marvel at how it is being said. It is written with clarity and soulfulness by a man that obviously walks through life with his eyes wide open. Savor it like a fine wine. It will remind you to wake up to the wonder and beauty in the details of your everyday life.

This book was selected by my book club. I found the premise very intriguing (a man who can foretell events that he will later witness), and I really enjoyed the first half. However, I found the third quarter of the book unbelievably slow and painful to plod through. The description was wonderful, and the writing finely crafted, but very, very little happened for much too much of the book. The ending became more compelling, but I never got past how much I disliked a good portion of it. Almost everyone in my book club agreed that we found ourselves skimming whole pages just to get to an actual event. I really think that a good editor should have suggesting cutting about 100 pages from the middle of this book. Sorry, but I can't recommend....

About Grace is a beautifully written story about one man's struggle with life, love, and loss.

Herman Winkler is a man cursed with the ability to see events before they happen, like luggage falling out of an overhead bin, or a pedestrian getting hit by a car. The stress and torment that this "gift" brings wreaks havoc in Winkler's life, ruining his personal and business relationships and almost costing him his own life. He runs away from everything and everyone he loves in an attempt to alter the future as he's seen it.

Like The Shell Collector before it, About Grace delves into all aspects of the human condition, from love, happiness, and success, to fear, sorrow, and loss. The story is an intriguing one, but it's the writing itself that is mesmerizing. It is cold and haunting like the ice crystals about which Doerr's hydrologist protagonist so often speaks. The sentences are brimming with metaphors ("It was the third of September, plenty of broth left in summer's cauldron") that paint a vivid picture for the reader.

About two-thirds of the way through it did hit a slow point, but redeemed itself in the end. It's a complex story, but worth the read.

David Winkler is a 32-year-old hydrologist leading a fairly boring life in Anchorage, Alaska. Since childhood, he has experienced dreams that occasionally turn out to be actual premonitions. The most vivid one involves a man cut in half by a bus. Despite his mother's best attempts to avoid any incidents (she keeps him home for several days after he confides the dream), it comes to pass that, after shopping for groceries on a Saturday, he witnesses a man --- carrying the same hatbox as in his dream --- keeping his inevitable date with the bus of destiny.

In the dream that most affects his adult life, he watches a woman drop a magazine in a store and he picks it up for her. Eventually, he picks up the magazine for one Sandy Sheeler --- a woman he knows he will fall in love with, a woman he semi-stalks for several months, whose magazine he keeps and reads until the pages are tattered, a woman who is married.

Their affair begins with afternoon movie matinees and stretches into Wednesday evenings spent in his apartment as her husband has hockey on those nights. Before long, she becomes pregnant and, since her husband has been deemed infertile, it is obviously David's. They run away together and end up in Cleveland where David has found a job with a TV station as the staff meteorologist and Sandy fulfills an artist's dream by constructing large, elaborate metal sculptures in the basement of their little tract house by a feeder creek of the Chagrin River.

David's baby daughter, Grace, is born, and as babies tend to do, she changes his life in completely unexpected ways. His happiness and contentedness are palpable as he counts the minutes at work until he can go home to watch his little girl sleep and watch his wife (because, despite not being divorced from her husband, they have married) toiling over her art. All is well.

Then he has a dream. He dreams of a long, rainy spell in Ohio, one that swells rivers to flood stage and even causes creeks to rise. He dreams of his house, deserted and filling with water, seemingly empty as he runs room to room, yet he knows this cannot be because he can hear a baby crying. He finds Grace and stumbles outside with her only to be met by a wall of water that sweeps them both away. He awakes. He cannot shake the dream and it stirs his old sleepwalking habit. It gets so bad that his wife will shake him awake in the driveway, sitting in the car with the baby on the seat, having just returned from driving to where or from neither of them have any idea. In addition to panicking about whether his dream will come true, he now panics about what he himself might do to his daughter in his sleep.

Ultimately, the dream comes true. It rains and rains. It floods. He spirits his family off to a motel. But after leaving them there and being sent away by Sandy out of fear of his sleepwalking, he returns to the house after attempting to call the motel and getting no answer. His street, neighborhood and home look exactly like the scene of his dream, and unable to go any further, he runs to his car and literally runs away.

David ends up in St. Vincent for 25 years. He becomes a laborer, then handyman, at a local resort he helps build. He is adopted as a strange, white uncle by an island family, whose daughter forms an unusual bond of the soul with him. He writes letters upon letters to Sharon, trying to find out if Grace is alive or if the entire dream became a reality. His simple life on the island is appealing and satisfying, yet his hunger for information on his daughter finally drives him back to the United States where he tracks down Sharon Sheelers and Grace Winklers from state to state until he ends up back where he started in Alaska. Ironically, his island "niece," Naaliyah, ended up in Alaska (partly due to the college recommendations he wrote for her) and he manages to find her out in the bush where she is preparing to spend the winter studying the hibernation tendencies of insects. They eventually return to the city where he finds answers to the big questions that have been haunting him for most of his life.

It would be easy to scorn David Winkler. It would be easy to call him a "little" man; a man who ran away from his responsibilities and duties; a man who left a "wife" and baby daughter one day and never came back. However, there is a much larger issue at hand. This is a man who really thought that his presence in his daughter's life was jeopardizing her safety. His wife even thought so. If this premonition didn't come to full fruition, then what about the next one he might have? Or the one after that? It is heart-wrenching to put oneself in these shoes; and it is heart-wrenching to watch him deal with this day in and day out for so long. In the end, it seems to make a very strong argument for the case that parental love in absentia perhaps can be just as strong as if the parent were present.

I highly recommend ABOUT GRACE --- it is beautifully written, has a quiet suspense that carries it right along, and a main character in David Winkler who the reader will come to admire and respect as a father, a father figure, and a man.

--- Reviewed by Jamie Layton