Customer Reviews

Gabriel's Story

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Pretty much all the reviewers so far have loved this book. There's just one guy who dissented, but I guess there's always gonna be one that doesn't catch on. For my part, I'd like to join in the chorus of enthusiasm for this novel. It works, and it works on many levels. At the simplest level it's an adventure story. Woven into that is a coming of age tale. Layered on that is a dialogue between good and evil, between the best and worst in men's natures. Add the back and forth between the life of homesteaders and that of cowboys, two dual and sometimes dueling aspects of the American frontier experience. There's a young black man discovering the natural world and relating to it in a way I've never seen in African-American literature. There's the turmoil of a mother watching her young sons become men, for better and worse. There's the anguish of a man who's family has died tragically. There's the strange legacy of slavery as manifest through two characters who don't even understand how they fit into that tragedy.

All this and more can be found in this exceptional novel. I guess not everyone will engage with it so completely, but if any of these themes sound interesting to you I encourage you to delve into this book. It's all there, and an attentive reader will be well rewarded.

I picked up this book after reading the USA Today review, which was essentially an unconditional rave. I decided to give it a try, but figured I'd probably be disappointed, as few books live up to the praise heaped on them. But GABRIEL'S STORY was a pleasant surprise. It begins with vivid homesteading scenes - all the toil and the poverty of it. Makes me glad I wasn't a homesteader, and it made it reasonable that Gabriel would want to run away from it. The journey that he sets off on is truly engrossing, well-plotted, with beautiful language and great descriptions of the Western landscape.

It looks like the novel is being compared to Cormac McCarthy's work. There are some similarities, but GABRIEL'S STORY is a bit more hopeful than McCarthy's work. The world is still harsh and dangerous, but Durham seems to have more faith in humanity, in family and friends. Also, I thought it was interesting that the reviewer in USA Today said that he was a city-dwelling white guy that still got into this book about a black boy in another century out on the plains. I felt the same way. Yes, the main characters are black, but their racial identity is only part of the whole world of the story. They're black like James Joyce's characters are Irish or Faulkner's are Southern - it matters, but it doesn't change the fact that anybody can connect with them. Altogether a really good novel.

The prodigal son always comes home. Iin life, in parable and in literature.

And he has returned once more in "Gabriel's Story," a haunting debut by David Anthony Durham. In this incarnation, the wayward youth is a 15-year-old African-American boy in the empty middle of a continent, caught between youth and manhood, naiveté and wisdom, family and flight.

Fleeing racism in Reconstruction-era Baltimore, Gabriel Lynch travels with his mother and younger brother to his stepfather's hard-scrabble homestead in 1870s Kansas. As with the Biblical story of the prodigal son, Gabriel finds the "outside" world less exciting and more threatening than he dreamed. He returns to Kansas wiser and chastened, prepared to take his place behind the plow and, more importantly, at the family hearth. "Gabriel's Story" is a classical bildungsroman -- a novel about the moral and psychological growth of the main character -- told in masterful prose reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy.

His is not just a startlingly poetic African-American voice (Durham is the son of Trinidadian immigrants), but a welcome new voice in the rich spectrum of American letters, where authors should -- and must -- be judged in different shades of black and white: The color of words on a page.

Attention, readers who admire Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry take heart. Another young literary mind has entered the fray with a suspenseful and intelligent take on the long-ago American West. In his debut novel Durham has managed to create a nearly flawless work, not bad for a young fella. Has he roamed the llano and arroyo on horseback himself? If not, then my hat is off to his realistic portrayal of the trials of life in the saddle. I could have done without the moralistic Christian trappings, but so were the times resigned to life's cruelties.

Blood Meridian take heed, another compadre in innocence has hit the trail with gruesome desperados.

I really enjoyed this book. If enjoyed is the right word... Some of the scenes are a bit harrowing. I had to put the book down a few times at some of the more gruesome scenes. But I just put it down to get a breather. It was never long before I was into it again. The author deals with some material that we've seen before, but having an African-American boy as the focus puts a new spin on it. And he strikes a balance with his characters. He has some vile ones but also a lot of noble ones. He let's the vile ones speak. Sometimes the things they say aren't pleasant, but that just serves to put the noble characters in bolder display. And as far as I can tell, the book is getting plenty of accolades. The New York Times Review was incredible. As was the USA Today review. And he was part of a Time magazine feature story. So I think he's well on his way.

Page-turner, can't put it down, tour de force, and all those other cliches apply to Gabriel's Story. Actually, I could put it down, but only because I had to. Couldn't wait to pick it up again.

Gabriel's Story is an amazing adventure -- perfectly plausible -- of a teen aged African American in the 1870's who leaves his family's Kansas farm unannounced. He and a friend join a crew of cowboys headed for Texas....

How to tell more of the book without giving away bits and pieces of the story that is best discovered by the reader? Can't be done.

Suffice it to say that Gabriel sees and experiences more than he could ever had imaganed. He is handicapped by racism, his youth and inexperience, but boasts the distinct advantages of intelligence and a good heart.

If you're overly sensitive to violence, beware; but it all rings true to the times and is never gratuitous.

Now stop reading reviews of the book and buy it, you'll be glad you did.

This is a coming-of-age story with elements of All the Pretty Horses and Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch." There are no two dimensional characters in this story. It's a fully fleshed out story of good and evil and all the subtleties in between. Gabriel's Story will grab a hold of you and not let go until the last page. There is violence, but it is not the shoot-'em-up brand. It's a visceral ultra real violence that you may want to shield your eyes from, but like Gabriel, you're a witness and have to live with the evil acts that humans act out upon each other. I'm tempted to say that this is a damn fine first novel, but it would be a first rate novel, whether it was Durham's first or fifth. He is a brilliant writer, able to portray both the beauty and harsh ugliness that composes the world we reside in.

Gabriel's Story is a very readable novel - and yet with complex characters and plot twists. The author's love of the landscape shines through and the historical setting seems just right for the story. The uncertainty of the time period and location, as well as the age and race of the main character make every scene full of possibility or dread. A very different kind of "western" that is suspenseful and well written.

When I consider buying a book I look it over asking two questions. One, does the author have a story to tell? Two, does he or she have the skills to tell that story compellingly? As far as "Gabriel's Story" is concerned, the answer is yes on both counts. The story is strong both because it has a tight spine along which the narrative progresses and because the author picks up on an under-acknowledged feature of the American West, namely the role African-Americans played in its history. The novel educates, but it does so effortlessly, so that a reader is transported along on an adventure tale, probably not even noticing how much the novel adds new dimensions to writing about the West. As for the author's skills... He's got it. The narrative reads like some combination of "Lonesome Dove" and "Paradise", somehow spliced together with a cinematographer's eye for horizon-lines, with a soft heart for the family scenes and a keen eye for the violent passages. And it even has a satisfying ending. That's rare these days and seems especially hard for first novelists to pull off. Congrats to the author.

Here is my reaction to one of the best books I have ever read. The book is "Gabriel's Story" by David Anthony Durham. The action takes place in the 1870's. The protagonist is Gabriel, an African-American youth who has just turned 16. The other characters are his brother Ben, just turned 14; his step-father, Solomon; his mother, and his uncle. Gabriel's parents were freed slaves. After their freedom, they lived in Baltimore, where Gabriel enjoyed the big city life. Then his father dies, and his mother decides to go west to Kansas to join and marry her first love, Solomon. The two were separated by slavery. Gabriel doesn't realize that they were in love before this time. Gabriel resents his mother's remarriage and the hard life homesteading on the Kansas prairie. He has all of a teenager's resentment of everything with something real to pin them on. He makes a friend, an African-American orphan his age whose name is James. Together the boys decide to join a group of cowboys and help them drive some horses west to Texas. What the boys don't realize is that these are very bad men they have fallen in with -- the very worst men there could be. As the trip begins, Gabriel and James gradually discover what these men really are, and now their greatest desire is to get away from them. The rest of the novel contains their picaresque travels with the men, trying to leave the men, and trying to return to Kansas. The author has done a marvelous job with this book. The plot is exciting and adventurous, with many twists and turns. The characters and their relationships are complex. The description is wonderful. I felt I was with Gabriel every step of the way on his journey. On Sunday I read in a frenzy from 2 to 6 because I couldn't stop until I finished this book. At times my heart was pounding and I almost stopped breathing as I said aloud, "Oh, no!" I was so involved in this. In addition, the author's writing is beautiful and eloquent. I wouldn't have predicted that I would fall in love with a book one might call a "Western," but this novel defies categorization. The aspect of African Americans homesteading is unusual and interesting. I immediately wrote to the author to thank him for this book, and I hope other people will enjoy it as well. It might be a good one to recommend to teens.