Customer Reviews

Going to the Sun

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This novel snaked its way around my heart, and its characters have been lingering in my head for days. I'm hesitant to start in on another book because I don't want the world of Penny, the Saint and Ndele to be edged out of my consciousness.

I'm curious to know what the author's personal experience with chronic illness is, because he has so perfectly captured what it feels like to inhabit a broken down body. The novel's protagonist, Penny, has a severe case of juvenile-onset diabetes. Living with a pervasive chronic illness is living with an ornery beast inside of you. Some days he leaves you alone and sleeps, but most of the time he's hungry and wants to devour your energy and spirit from the inside. You wrestle him, sometimes tame him, often ignore him as he gnaws on your leg--it's a chaotic cycle of confrontation and denial, victory and defeat.

Penny is so drawn into the struggle with her diabetes that she finds it difficult to establish a positive sense of self, to identify herself as anything but a failure. The illness feels like punishment, evidence of her unworthiness. This makes it difficult for her to connect with other people.

And then the first person she starts to connect with--a college boyfriend she calls the Saint--gets literally devoured by a beast, an Alaskan bear. For the next seven numb years, she stumbles around academia back in Chicago. She decides to embark on a summertime cross-country bike trek back to Alaska, both to escape and to confront. To escape the stultifying academic environment, an overbearing dissertation advisor and a way-overdue dissertation. And to confront her body's decay and her mind's obsession with how and why her boyfriend died.

The bulk of the novel chronicles her journey and the dialogue that runs through her head as the bike wheels tick off Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana... It's not a glamorized journey: cheesy motels, aggressive road-hogging trucks, dubious road conditions, and sweaty t-shirts abound. But along the way she learns that something as little as a pothole can change your life. And that healing comes not from a syringe, but from the power of connecting with another human being--the healing of human kindness, the healing of human touch.

What's amazing is that within this beautiful story, the author integrates provocative issues like racism and euthanasia seamlessly. They come up naturally, as part of the story, rather than stick out as "this-is-a-novel-of-the-90's" issues du jour.

As someone living with a beast of a chronic illness myself, I can testify that the author's treatment of illness is spot-on. The book will linger on my nightstand, and in my heart, for quite some time, as I reread passages and smile again at how a cranky protagonist not unlike myself finds what she needs in the unlikeliest of ways.

This book was "booktalked" at the WA Library Association meeting this year, so I got hold of it right away. What a beautifully written story. I can't believe someone would call it a "Judy Blume" book - gee, I don't see that at all. The fragile and yet resilient nature of Penny makes her very intriguing. James McManus has written a poetic, intelligent novel which shouldn't be missed.

I've read this book twice now and have found it special both times--the language and the content both are unique. Each time, though, I've reread the ending over and over trying to ascertain what happens (maybe I just don't want to admit it). If someone would email me with their opinion (or certainty) as to what happens to Penny, I'd appreciate it.

Here's what I liked about GOING INTO THE SUN. First, James McManus seems to have great insight into womanhood. My female friend who recommended this novel agreed. In this respect, the book is artful and ingenious. The internal talk within the main character is utterly fascinating. Second, McManus has a rare command of the English language. He is able to put words together that creates such a vivid portrayal of the characters, they do NOT appear to be fictional. Reading this book is more like watching a movie. McManus creates pictures in my mind.

Now, I don't like many of the outcomes that happened in the book. I suspect my uneasiness is related to McManus vivid writing style. I would describe many passages in the book as "unnerving" and "distressing." McManus' writing can put the reader on edge. You're not going to like it, but you won't be able to stop reading.

At the beginning, I had a great admiration for the heroine, Penny Culligan. I was astounded with this disabled woman's courage. My admiration for her grew stronger and stronger by each passing page. However, in the end I felt "let down." She chickened out! But then again, after some reflection (and this book WILL make you reflect), it couldn't have ended any other way. My admiration was renewed.

The plot itself traverses Wisconsin through Montana on a bike - throughout it all, however, Penny thinks and rethinks her history, potential futures, life, death, existence...it really weaves together the everyday and grandscale. Shocking end for this reader, but Ive probably already said too much. 8 )

This book was so good it hurt.

Going to look for more by this author

OK. You'll read through all of these reviews and conclude that this is a so-so book. Could be true. If I were lucky enough to run into someone who reads enough to pick up this book, I'd be prone to follow the conversation any way it went just to be in the conversation. I do, however, want to say that while maybe the facts don't check out and by the end, you do want to sit in a library for a day and see what state diabetes research is in, if you allow yourself to just get lost in the color of the language, it is an entrancing book. The internal dialog was very natural for my attention span, and the different parts succeeded in bringing me deeper and deeper into this character's specific existential crisis. I read it in one sitting and thought it was better than the average movie.

I browsed through this book on the new fiction shelf some months ago, put it back, and the beginning of the story haunted me ever since. There was something about the voice of the protagonist that I really liked. I finally decided to buy it several weeks later as a gift for my wife, and I'm very glad I did. I loved the story, the mood, the setting, the characters, the feel. The ending was not what I wanted, but McManus is apparently a dark writer, and since the story had such a bleak feel, I guess he felt it could only end on a dark note. But my hat is off to him for a truly great novel. I couldn't put it down, and I usually only say that about suspense thrillers

Did fate have something to do with me reading this book--"Positively Fifth Street" is one of my favorites, and I saw this one lying on the sidewalk one day and had to pick it up. I know next to nothing about diabetes in women, but I'm sure McManus does as he dedicates the book to his adult daughter who grapples with the disease.

Anyone who has read "Fifth Street" will immediately pick up on McManus' witty, sharp style--I've heard that he captures the inner mind of a woman with eerie accuracy in "Going to the Sun," but for me, the style is simply pure McManus genius. There are phrases that match verbatim between "Fifth Street" and "Sun," and in the right places.

The most haunting passage for me is the part where Penny recounts her maturing awareness of the "endgame" of her disease as she moves from childhood to adolescence, and how she does (not) deal with it--I can't imagine being a parent of a child diabetic and reading this part. And Penny's deep introspection while biking along Route 2 is astonishingly relatable, even to non-cyclists, just on an order of magnitude higher.

Next up--revisiting Beckett...with a new-found perspective.

This book was amazing! Finally, a work of fiction in which the main character has diabetes and shares her internal struggle. Most other 'real' diabetics that I meet try and pretend that the disease is in the background. As Penny shows, diabetes is always at the surface, making decisions for her, and haunting her with myths. I wish there were other characters like her to reach out to diabetics who crave interaction with a believable story.