Customer Reviews

Carry Me Across the Water

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I loved this book. It's a riveting story of an old man's struggle to come to terms with a lifetime of decisions and their consequences. As Kleinman mounts a series of small, surprising initiatives to fight the boredom and loneliness of retirement and widowhood and to build a relationship with a grown son who distrusts and misunderstands him, he reflects with conflicting emotion on the experiences that have shaped his life. Canin covers an astonishing range of material here -- recognizing fear on his infant son's face in rough play, feeling peace as he and his mother fled Germany for America without his father-- these are moments so disparate in substance and scale and chronology that in most writers' hands the full story would take 600 pages to tell. Not in Canin's. He moves through them so seamlessly that despite my plans to get a good night's sleep I stayed up to finish the book in one sitting. And the compassion and emotional insight for which the author has earned a much-deserved reputation graces every scene. The CPR class Kleinman takes with his wife is alone worth the price of the book. This scene is less than a page (less than a page!), and reading it brought two friends who had not yet even read the rest of the book to tears.

For those of you who haven't read Canin's other work, I envy you. Read "The Palace Thief" after this one. I challenge you not to read it more than once.

This book was recommended to me by a good friend whose taste I trust, but I'm afraid I was disappointed. The writing is, of course, very fine, but I found the story splintered unnecessarily. I have read books where this technique works well, but here I found myself getting impatient. I wish the author had skipped most of the part with August's son and included more of the Japanese story. And I felt manipulated by the ending.

August Kleinman, immigrant and self-made millionaire, has grown old. Nearing what he knows to be the end of his life, he now believes that everything he has worked for and achieved -- the money, the business -- are worthless when compared to what he has lost -- his late wife and the time he could have spent with her and their children.

The thread that makes this more than just another "old-man-looks-back" story involves some papers August had removed from a Japanese soldier he had killed during World War II. Keeping the documents which included a love letter, August had them translated and framed after the war. Almost 50 years later, in what may be one of the final achievements in his life, he traveled to Japan and returned the letter to the Japanese soldier's son. The trip, from the memory of the hunting and the killing of the soldier to the son's reading of the letter containing secrets he had not been told, allowed August to make amends, freeing him from the emotional and psychological baggage he had carried for so long.

This was a quick read for me (just a few hours), but this isn't a light read. Canin succeeded in making August a multi-faceted character, both aggravating and endearing. The decisions made by the characters, including August's mother's decision to flee Nazi Germany and August's struggle with Judaism, help to round out the story. Very enjoyable.

After the major disappointment of For Gods and Planets, Canin again displays a mastery of his craft in Carry Me Across the Water. What a pleasure to find a novel that can be comfortably read in a couple of days yet leaves a deep emotional impression. I disagree with the reviewer who complained about the form, which uses flashbacks and cuts between various scenes in the protagonist's life; there's nothing confusing about it, and it works beautifully. I do agree that Canin has brought to bear his skill as a short story writer in conveying the essence of a good novel without the tedium of endless descriptions and meandering plot lines. For those looking for a complex interweaving of many well-developed characters, look elsewhere; this is the story of one man's life, in which all other characters are supporting, existing only through the lens of his aging eyes in order to help us understand how he feels as he approaches the end of his life, and why. Those reviewers who found the man unsympathetic perhaps are just not as familiar with their own irritable side as they hopefully will be eventually. I found the portrait very true to my experience. Canin seems to do much better with older characters; his young people tend to be two-dimensional, but he has a wonderful grasp of the subtleties of the minds of people much older than he is himself.

After For Gods and Planets I wondered whether Canin was capable of writing a good novel. As I finished the last page of this one, I said out loud to myself, "A good book."

Wide in scope, yet focused intently on one man's character, this novel entwines you in its world and makes you happy to be caught. The story of August Kleinman's life is compelling not because it is emblematic of something larger (though, of course, it is), but because Canin so exactly draws the events of this man's life that you come to believe not only in the character, but that you truly experieced his life. A great novel.

August Kleinman is a a man in his 70s who has fully experienced life, from his escape out of Germany as a child to his service in WWII to his lucrative career as a business entrepreneur. Now, his beloved wife has passed away, and Augie struggles with maintaining a relationship with his son and new grandson while also trying to come to terms with his guilt about past mistakes. Author Canin skillfully weaves stories of the past--Augie's experiences as a soldier in Japan, the progression of his marriage--with those of the present--namely, Augie's interactions with his remaining family and a return trip to Japan. Although the frequent changes in setting could have been disorienting, Canin keeps the reader grounded with use of simple yet enchanting language. Slowly but surely, the story of Augie's life enfolds, coming to a satisfying conclusion while still leaving the reader with questions about Augie's exact fate. Sweet without being overly sentimental, this is a short novel with a wide appeal.

In his Carry Me Across the Water, Ethan Canin enables us to see the profound and indescribable depths of humanity through the most unlikely means. With a non-linear plotline, a snapshot-style narrative, and a protagonist who isn't always the most likeable of men, Canin slowly pulls back the curtain on the life of August Kleinman and a number of life's crucial themes.

Unlike many stories that struggle with the inner depths of a life, this is a masterpiece in reduction. By juxtaposing a few brief incidents in August's life, Canin alludes to the many great themes of life without losing us in the inconsequential details. I've noticed from other reviews here that some people feel as though Canin has given us a series of disconnected short stories rather than something complete. To a minimal extent that is true... much like it is true that all of our lives are really a series of seemingly disconnected events, and a focused plotline is something imposed by writers to make sense of it all. Canin shows us that, if you look closely enough, you might be able to grasp at the depths of life, even without the traditional narrative thread.

I bought "Carry Me Across The Water" the day it came out. I was blown away by Canin's book "For Kings & Planets" and had been eagerly awaiting his next one. I wasn't let down.
In comparison with Canin's other works, "Carry Me" is short and almost poetic. This sparse novel only runs 206 pages in length, but the story is infinitely bigger. August Kleinman, the main character, is a man driven to complete a task his life has been leading him toward...as a young soldier in the Pacific during World War II, he killed a Japanese soldier. 50 years later, he brings the soldier's family "souveniers" that he collected when he killed the soldier.
This book is a lot more than that, though. It is about love, and accepting the passage of time. It is about overcoming fear (particularly during the well-written World War II sequences.) It is also about moving on with your life.
I loved every page of this novel. In terms of emotional impact, I would say it is like "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee...it is a short, amazingly suspenseful work that you will think about and remember for a long time afterward.

This is a great book. It's short, but it ranges over continents and decades, and over the pivotal events of this century. I think it is the best of the three books of Mr. Canin's that I've read. I cried--not an exaggeration--at two scenes in the book, and at the end, which was one of the most powerful in my memory. I suppose I wish Mr. Canin had made the book a little longer, but that in a sense is a compliment, too. Most books I wish were shorter. This is serious, powerful, and heartbreaking work.

This novel is a pure pleasure to read -- among the most poignant and beautifully written books I've ever come across. From the very first few moments, reading the exquisite love letter that opens the novel, I was seduced. August Kleinman, the story's protagonist, is so powerfully and vividly imagined, so complicated and human, that he will linger with you for a lifetime. Though some might complain that the rich panorama of Kleinman's life ought to have been stretched out into a much longer novel, I don't agree. This gorgeous gem of a book, elegantly structured (brilliantly even), held me unerringly in its grasp. It would be very difficult to remain unmoved by this book's poignancy and beauty.