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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dark and clever,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Gob's Grief: A Novel (Hardcover)
Chris Adrian is a gifted, highly imaginative writer who takes the theme of grief and builds upon it by blending historical fact and actual people with a cast of intriguing, sometimes fascinating, characters. The Civil War details make for compelling reading and the first half of the book carries the reader along at a steady gallop. The second half, which delves into the backgrounds of many of the characters, is far slower in pacing and requires a committed interest on the part of the reader. The feel for time and place is wonderfully effective; the pervasive grief (of all the central characters) is almost overwhelming. But I found it tough going to get through to the end. This is a heavy book, on a heavy theme: the notion that the loss of beloved brothers could drive people to create a machine that would reverse the process and bring all the dead back to life. Some of the characters in Gob's Grief are extraordinarily compelling creations, particularly the Urfeist, and Pickie Beecher. I recommend this book with the caveat that it is not for the faint of heart or those unwilling to suspend disbelief. Certainly, I'll be very interested to see what Chris Adrian does next. For a first novel, this is an impressive debut.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unusual and impressive,
By A Customer
This review is from: Gob's Grief: A Novel (Paperback)
A boy, Tomo, runs off to battle during the Civil War, leaving his hesitant twin brother Gob behind, and is almost instantly killed. A few years later we meet Gob once again, now a doctor driven by guilt and loss to construct a fantastic machine that will bring Tomo (and all the thousands of Civil War dead) back to life. Others are driven to join Gob's quest--the poet Walt Whitman, who hears the voice of a dead soldier in his head; Dr. Will Fie, literally followed by ghosts through the streets, and beautiful Maci Trufant, who flees her father's madness only to find her own left hand becoming the instrument for her dead brother's frantic communications, scribbled from somewhere beyond the grave. GOB'S GRIEF is a strikingly emotional and original novel, set in a time when Americans were seemingly drowning in anguish, desperately trying to make sense of a country that had turned on itself. Elements of romance, history, horror, spiritualism and magic realism are ambitiously combined, with mixed results--sometimes the book feels repetitious and overstuffed, and some elements simply never quite manage to fit. However, as a whole, this is a memorable debut novel from a talented writer. I'll be looking for his name again.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Masterful Work,
By A Customer
This review is from: Gob's Grief: A Novel (Hardcover)
The nod to Best Book of the Year has certainly peaked early with the release of Chris Adrian's "Gob's Grief". Far too few contemporary tomes manage to balance the World of Ideas a la Saul Bellow and gripping drama as beautifully as Adrian does. His prose is consistantly poetic, inspired and enchanting, transporting the reader into Civil War-torn America with complete ease. "Gob's Grief" soars, transforms and, ultimately, helps heal the mortal wounds that are part of being all too human. Stunning.
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