Customer Reviews

Backward-Facing Man

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Yes, I will agree that Mr. Silver's voice is wry and oft-amusing. I also concur with those who find moments of beauty within this mess of a novel. But mostly I just found it disjointed and unsatisfying, full of bedraggled characters with no positive or endearing qualities. The idea of this being a novel full of passionate idealism is somewhat misleading as well, for I found Chuck to be only passionate about Lorraine, Lorraine to be only passionate about arguing and Fredrick only passionate about being a rebel. And I will not even start on virtually every other character in the book. That aside, the novel just fails to gel. There is no protagonist and no narrative thread except for a thin trickle of substantive plot. If you want a novel voiced from multiple perspectives read Faulkner, but this just does not work. Still, it was entertaining and there is a glimmer of hope that, once Mr. Silver gets passed his debut, he'll become a stronger more confident author. He has the chops, I can tell, he just does not show them here.

Especially if you're a baby boomer, it will hit you where you live. But younger people should read it too, for the wit & illumination. Silver grapples with big questions. I really loved the complex plot, the combination of compelling motion and richness of detail. It kept me absorbed in a way many books do not. And I had a lot of affection for the characters - even the most despicable have their endearing aspects!
  I hope some independent producer buys the movie rights. Hollywood can't do it justice.

I rarely read novels these days, since I'm a Ph.D. candidate with a heavy reading load.

I thought Backwards Facing Man was fantastic. Once I opened it, I stayed up late and woke up early to get back to the story. I've already bought a copy on Amazon to send as a gift to a friend who lived in Boston in '68. Don Silver is no Proust or Faulkner, but this novel is a cut above the standard for popular fiction. Plus, it's a real page turner with compelling characters and a great story line.

I just loved Backward-Facing Man, and I was always eager to read on to see what was going to happen next in this novel that has plenty of twists and turns of plot and lots of variety in settings and time frames. Don Silver has created a character I really care about, Chuck Puckman. Puckman is someone who has never sauntered down main street in his own glow, but how many people ever do? Puckman has pretty much ridden on the sidecar of everyone else's life, and that's why I care about him. The main dramatic question is this: Is Chuck Puckman going to get his life back after being severely swindled and betrayed by his brother, haunted by a radical past, dogged by legal authorities for an industrial accident that wasn't quite his fault, shadowed by his own drug abuse, and few other serious things?

Backward-Facing Man has great descriptive writing. The level of detail is so lifelike that I could smell the marijuana in the none-too-tidy apartments of college-age kids, the bacon frying in the diner, and even the toxic industrial chemicals that play a key role in one of the plot lines. There are head-trippy scenes from the Sixties, glimpses of a cult-like rural commune that happens to be the hideout of violent, paranoid early 1970s radicals complete with Patty Hearst, wild and exotic vistas of Belize, and a grimy old factory in Philadelphia that malingers like the corpse of industry. If you like literary thrillers, you'll love Backward-Facing Man.

Strong images and details create a solid reality which Silver's characters inhabit as they each struggle with betrayal and redemption for choices made and unmade.
The author is unafraid to weave themes and questions that take this first effort past your typical mystery tale.
Silver's narrative voice is clear, often wry.
He knows how to tell a tale and keep the story moving.
Looking forward to more.

The media reviews and press releases often describe Don Silver's BACKWARD-FACING MAN as the story of the agonizing disillusionment of the post-radical lives of three college students from the late 1960's. But these characters, Chuck Puckman (the disconnected MIT student turned aimless co-partner in a failed family-owned company), Fredrick "Fergus" Keane (radical anarchist, former Volcano Bomber, and now fugitive from the law), and Lorraine Nadia (once the lover of both men) are the soul, but not center of the story. When the novel opens, Chuck is facing charges for an industrial accident in his family business, Nadia has just died in a hiking accident, and Fredrick is deep underground in hiding from the FBI. And as the story progresses the nature of their complex relationships and the fascinating tale of their lives as political radicals is revealed.



BACKWARD-FACING MAN is not a straight narrative, but rather an artful jumble of characters, voices, perspectives, history (both real and re-imagined) and time periods. Many other characters enter the picture with varying degrees of success. First we meet Stardust, Lorraine's daughter, a rather endearing character who serves to provide a modern view of the story of these three people, but fails to develop as a character. We also meet Artie, Chuck's truly repulsive brother, and, for seemingly no reason at all, two FBI agents, John Russell and Eric Dodson. Finally there is Winnie, the writer-narrator of the story. Even Patty Hearst plays a role. And these are just a sample - honestly, it is a very crowded and noisy novel.



Each of these characters plays a distinct role in the plot, but I found that sometimes the multiplicity of perspectives distorted the narrative structure. For example, I found the passages dealing with Artie and his flight to Central America to be overly long and distracting and I quickly grew tired of the two FBI agents. Granted, the latter provided pertinent information regarding the activities of Chuck, Nadia and Lorraine in the late 1960's, but their personalities, background stories and general situation became a bit tiresome. Chuck and Lorraine are compelling characters and the portions of the novel set in the late 1960's and early 1970's are quite captivating. Even the narrative thread concerning Chuck's legal woes holds interest. But, quite frankly, other parts of the novel lag, short-shrifting the development of characters (such as Chuck and Nadia, about whom I wanted to hear) and favoring a multiplicity of minor characters I would have preferred to ignore.



BACKWARD-FACING MAN alternates between the first-person narrative voice of Winnie (a friend of both Lorraine and Patty Hearst) and a less distinct, third-person omniscient voice which occasionally takes on the tone of movie voice-over. As Winnie, Silver is engaging, compelling and often achingly beautiful. But unfortunately, Silver's complex narrative structure calls for perspectives that might not be visible to such a remote first person narrator as Winnie. The result is a novel perhaps stronger in plot, but a weaker in style. Overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it. It is a tale of loyalty and betrayal, loneliness and love, passion and disillusionment. It contains both moments of near-brilliance and a few flaws as well. I would give it three and one-half stars if I could. Try it, you'll certainly enjoy yourself.

Don Silver has written a novel in the manner and style of Tom Wolfe. Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" or "A Man in Full" come to mind. I know that is high praise, and Silver deserves it for his initial writing effort.

Don does a great job illustrating the struggles that are necessary to transform one's idealism from shallow, immature, self-absorbed, self-centered (inward facing) into and idealism that focuses on giving back (outward facing), even if that transformation is motivated by guilt. Don shows that some people make that transformation, while others, probably most, don't. Perhaps to change inward-facing to outward-facing, one must spend time backward-facing. Great job Don!

"Facing backwards on a moving train is the story of my life." So says Charles Puckman, Jr., a 50-something, grizzled, wrinkled, rumpled stranger to Stardust Nadia, a thirty year-old free-spirited woman who just lost her mother. They're on a moving train - to New York City...and Charlie is, in fact, seated facing the opposite direction from their eventual destination. Symbolism anyone?

Stardust doesn't know it yet, but she and Charlie are connected, through her mother, Lorraine Nadia, who is dead, somewhere on a Swiss mountain top, and events which occurred in the 1960's - a time of tremendous social upheaval, political assassinations, the Vietnam War, sex, drugs and rock n' roll.

Lorraine, a single parent, refused to answer Stardust's persistent questions about her father's identity. So Stardust knew nothing about the man who sired her. As a matter of fact, she knew little about the woman who bore and raised her. What she did know she learned from "things her mother left around the house - movie ticket stubs, toll booth receipts, scribbled notes," etc.. And she was very aware that her Mom took pleasure from planning and organizing and taking vacations. Lorraine was on vacation in Switzerland when she died.

Through Stardust's meeting with Charlie, the reader learns about Puckman's troubled history. He faced serious jail time in the 1990's for his role in an industrial accident, as well as for egregious crimes against the environment, etc., most of which his brother and father were responsible for - a story within the story.

Author Don Silver takes us on a nonlinear trip down memory lane and into the past of Puckman, an MIT student in the late 60's. Back then, he was an extremely shallow, drugged-out space cadet with little to contribute to society in general or to anyone in particular. (My opinion here - you may feel otherwise after reading the novel). He made his way, and tuition, by dealing drugs. Chuck hooked up with Lorraine Nadia, a pseudo-radical and overall do-nothing who believed she was a social and political activist, and Frederick Keane, a narcissistic nut case who would become the infamous "Volcano Bomber." Together they formed a social and sexual menage-a-trois and fed into each other's neuroses.

The narrative sometimes faces backward, like Charlie, shuttling between his, Lorraine's and Frederick's coming of age in the Age of Aquarius - Charlie's present, with his truly innovative new business and the opportunity to redeem himself - the criminal adventures of Charlie's obnoxious brother Arthur - Stardust's efforts to form a clear picture of her mother's past and her search for Frederick, who might be her father - and the musings of an aging FBI agent who dedicated his life and career to search for the Volcano Bomber. All these seemingly disparate elements do come together eventually and provide more than occasional entertainment.

The plot and subplots are lamely connected by the Symbionese Liberation Army's kidnapping of Patty Hearst in 1974. I guess Silver uses this event as a device to ground the reader in the "dark side" of the period, as opposed to the idealism of the flower children and the dedicated political and social activists. I don't think this works well at all and found the entire SLA business and the fictional characters who support this subplot to be absolutely superfluous.

Mr. Silver was too young to have participated in the events he writes about. His disillusionment with that time is the disappointment of a bystander, after the fact, not a participant. My memories are different - although granted, many young folks back then were overly enjoying the excesses of the age rather than contributing anything of value. Most of my memories are of the young men and women who joined the Peace Corps and VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), and those who worked for and with the Civil Rights Movement, the young people involved in politics and the difference they made with their campaigning for Gene McCarthy, Bobby Kennedy and George McGovern. There were others who protested the Vietnam War, within the system, on moral and legal grounds. Then there were the young innovators in the arts, music and literature. So, yes, although there was much darkness in the 1960's and 70's, much of it was not caused by the youth.

OK. Off my platform. Back to "Backward Facing Man." Although the narrative manifests some of the excesses of the generation it portrays, it is worth the read. Obviously I did not enjoy the 1960's portion - too flimsy and as spacy as the druggie characters. The rest of the plot is original and well written. Recommended by this reader!
JANA

Silver's elemental reprise of sixties angst resonates like thunder in today's bizarro-world political environment. A great first effort from a fresh new voice.