9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A surprisingly affecting novel., November 6, 2006
I don't typically write Amazon reviews, but I'm really amazed this book hasn't received more attention. I picked this book up at random in the library, and I will be forever grateful for that instance of serendipity. This is just a really well-written novel. I completely identified with the characters, which was surprising for me, as I often find fiction to be frustrating. As Roger Ebert says about movies, it's not what the movie is about, but how it is about it. This statement can apply here, as the story is wonderfully realized. This is a terrific novel. Read it.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Ghost Story for Adults?, July 24, 2006
The Inhabited World is what Evan Malloy left behind by dying. It is world he can see and hear -- but never rejoin -- after his death. In this novel, David Long turns around Descartes' dictum, "Cogito, ergo sum", and re-structures the world from the viewpoint of one who no longer lives, but still thinks, and does so with more understanding than when he was alive.
This is not your typical ghost story, although Long makes it clear from the outset that his narrator and principal character, like Dicken's Marley, is indisputibly deceased. 10 years after his death, Evan Malloy thinks, feels, sees, and hears everything that goes on in what had once been his Seattle house.
Long's crisp prose describes the characters populating the story, both the quick and the dead, with startling immediacy. They talk as real people do, not always making sense or even saying what they really mean. We are allowed to hear the internal dialog as well as what is actually spoken. I enjoyed seeing the present and past, and gradually fitting the pieces together, to see what drove Evan to despair and then to suicide.
To call this a ghost story is somewhat misleading, as it does not fit the mold of fantasy or "sci-fi." Its fictional characters are delineated, and their conversations crafted, in a reportorial style. If there were a genre for this book, it might be "imaginative memoir", for Evan's story is told in flashbacks, even as the action of new characters unfolds.
A vivid and compelling read, and, despite its gritty, reality-based subject matter, a book that left me feeling good about life in the inhabited world.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Haunting, in the best possible way., December 20, 2006
It's been a week since I finished The Inhabited World, and I still can't shake its spell. I read the terrific review in the NY Times, which piqued my interest, but I had no idea the experience of entering the world of this book would be so fulfilling and moving.
I have to say that I'm flabbergasted by the review printed here on Amazon, claiming the book is "slight" -- flabbergasted. I really don't know how anyone could arrive at that word. The daily life of the protagonist was so specific, small in scope but precise and utterly believeable, all of which qualities are rendered so poignant by the circumstances of the present (his suicide).
It is written with mastery; no new writer could achieve this simplicity, could so completely put his words to the service of his story. I never marvelled at his prose, just at the characters' behavior, and only after the book was laid down did I marvel at the exquisite and invisible engine that had driven the story to its conclusion. A heartbreaking and life-affirming conclusion.
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