Customer Reviews

Living to Tell: A Novel

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Long regarded in literary circles as one of America's finest writers, Antonya Nelson has yet to find a wider audience. I suspect LIVING TO TELL will change all this. Winston Mabie returns to his rambling childhood home in Wichita, Kansas after serving five years in prison for the drunk driving accident that killed his grandmother. Always charming and handsome, Winston has become the Mabie family's shame, the one they don't know what to do with, the "alcoholic" of the family even as his siblings, parents, and uncle seek their solace and comraderie through booze. As the Mabies adjust to Winston's return and the changes he represents, they begin to question the direction of their own lives. Nelson has populated her novel with quirky, complex, and decidedly real characters who struggle with their separate, often private dramas and who always return to the shifting terrain of those who have known them the longest. Her prose is clear and detailed, never sentimental or heavy-handed, and it carries this story forward with a surety that is remarkable. Especially if you enjoy Anne Tyler and Alice Hoffman (without the magic realism), you'll love this book.

This novel begins with a revelation: a young man has caused his grandmother's death in a drunk driving accident and is now returning home, after his incarceration, to a dysfunctional family that lives mostly under one roof, much like a benign patriarchy. The Mabies, Professor and Mrs., own a huge, rambling home large enough for all their grown children to reside comfortably, enabling each to pursue their interests, including romance, drugs and/or alcohol. It should be noted that the Mabies don't feel dysfunctional; their disagreements are few, and their ways familiar.

The divorced Emily inhabits the upstairs apartment with her two children. Mona lives in the main part of the house, having retreated to the safety of family after a suicide attempt over a broken relationship; the brother returning from jail adds to the curious mix. This family unit, along with assorted relatives and friends, work out their domestic complications with open-hearted kindness. When one of them becomes seriously ill, rather than destroying the family, they find a unity based on the value of everyday life.

I would like to see some of the more wordy passages shortened, but this author writes very believable dialog. Her characters, particularly the siblings, are defined by their loving natures and generosity towards eachother. As families go, this one is "functioning dysfunctional", able to avoid the more serious damage that usually affects this condition.

I've been a fan of Antonya Nelson's for about ten years. It's no
surprise to me she's earned the Flannery O'Connor and PEN/Nelson
Algren awards. Like O'Conner before her, Nelson writes stories filled
with the offbeat, dysfunctional, and neurotic (the DSM III made the
term neurotic passe, but what else is there? ). And, like O'Connor,
Nelson has a finely tuned ear for dialogue, which she uses effectively
to portray the psychological makeup of her characters.

I can
understand why some people might find this book offputting. People who
grew up in relatively normal healthy homes where alcoholism and it's
attendent dysfunctional behavior weren't the norm might not believe
folks like the Mabies exist. But, they do.

Scott Fitzgerald had an
alcohol problem and a wife Zelda some called zany and others called
crazy. He wrote about "3:00 o'clock in the morning of the
long night of the soul." I think of him on those nights when I
wake up and the clock beside my bed says 2:46 a.m. I think about him
when I stumble down the stairs past the night lights placed at
critical junctures between my bedroom and the kitchen. I think about
him when I switch on the light and pick up a book to read.

Or,
sometimes I think about Benjamin Franklin, who said if you can't sleep
at night, get up, walk around and flap your arms a bit. Or maybe I
think about my brother who has suffered from an alcohol and drug
problem ever since he dropped out as a flower child in the sixties. Or,
maybe I think about other relatives and friends who've OD'd, died by
their own hand, or been in bizarre accidents while under the influence.

From now on, I'll think about the Mabies--parents and children--up
at four a.m., falling over each other in the kitchen. It's easy to
describe Emily, Mona, and Winston as young adults in various stages of
arrested growth. Through the course of the book, however, each of them
makes an effort to improve. All three Mabie children are doing the best
they can.

I recommend this book to anyone who is in recovery,
knows someone in recovery, or works with people who are trying to get
sober. I read passages of the book to a friend who is in recovery and
works with alcoholics and drug addicts in recovery, and he howled
with laughter. Who knows, maybe you will too?

First let it be said that I adore Nelson's short stories. She consistently has stories in the Best American collections and they are always the ones I turn to first. United Front, a short story she has in I believe last years edition is easily my favorite of the lot. I started reading her short stories in college at U of A where she got her MFA and have loved her since then. This novel though, seemed tedious, drawn out and at times just plain boring. The characters themselves, though somewhat interesting aren't given enough space. Instead of one point of view she switches around, so I was never really sure who I was supposed to identify with. Also the jacket of the book leads us to believe this is a novel about the brother, when in fact in meanders all over the place. It's one big disfunctional family, which isn't interesting enough to hold my interest. There were times when the writing was wonderful, but the characters and all their whining got to be annoying. A bunch of loser kids, a mother with her head in the sand a father who hides out in the study should equal some sortof huge conflict that never really happens. There are all these little conflicts that never seem to go anywhere. I found myself scanning the last couple chapters but was bored bored bored.

Nelson's "Living to Tell" held my interest from the first to the last word. Her characters are especially vivid and provocative, drawn with warmth and humor but never sugar-coated; their character flaws and bad decisions are faithfully rendered. Anne Tyler is my favorite author, and Nelson's Mabie family is very "Tyler-esque" which is the highest compliment I can bestow.

I will be aquiring Nelson's previous work post-haste!

I have read all of Antonya Nelson's novels and enjoyed them all, but this is by far my favorite. I fell in love with the Mabies. I loved the structure of the novel. I felt like a ghost in the sprawling Mabie house, following this character, and then that one, as they went about the business of living. I was sad to see it end.

I think that maybe others did not like this book because each character is presented as a mixed bag, very subtle, with good and bad revealed about each. I don't think it's so much a problem of which character to identify with, but rather sorting out how we feel about each character as they are slowly filled in. Everybody gets a chance to be a hero and a dufus, as well as everything between. The characters one least likes as the novel begins, by the end, redeem themselves in various ways (a whole lot like real life). The alcoholism is presented as a constant but not overbearing presence, there but viewed as 'normal' and therefore not spoken of (applies to all of the subjects taboo in most of our families). Yet to the reader it becomes quite clear just what a driving force it is. Regarding the complaint that nothing happens, it is true this is not the thriller or the mystery, or the spellbinder. In my humble opinion it is the story of what goes on in real life, tragedies and triumphs that all of us overlook each and every day. By reading it, I have become a more keen observer of the incredible panoply of events that take place all around me. It is like a puzzle the deliciously fills in.

I hope that someday, something will show me why Nelson has garnered such acclaim; my guess is, it's in the short fiction. "Living to Tell" is the second of her novels I've read, and did not improve my opinion. In fact, as a book collector, I'm not sure I'll keep it around.

First, and most irritatingly, Nelson jumps point of view from character to character juvenilely, within paragraphs. I'm not one to shy away from omniscient narrators, and enjoy p.o.v. switching; see Moody's "Purple America" for an incredible handling of what Nelson attempts to achieve here, from the dysfunctional family (that should have been a perfect family), to the use of alcohol, to the fascination with mortality.

Nelson's characters, including Mona, the young woman who can only have relationships with married men; her sister, the perfect-on-the-outside, party-girl-on-the-inside Emily; and their unappreciative, loose cousin Sheila, to name the women, are cardboard cut-outs, annoying, cloying, and entirely uninteresting as people. I can't get close to any of them, nor to their brother, the killer (literally & figuratively) Winston, who is the focus of the first chapter and has the most interesting adventures, which are mainly hidden but (incorrectly) guessed at by his unimaginative family.

Nelson fits all the pieces together, but provides us with very little to chew on, although a lot to complain about. I'm just the kind of person who'll try another of her books, though, considering the many accolades named on the cover of the book. Meanwhile, give me Moody for depressive families, Moore for doomed romances, and Wallace for addicts.

I kept waiting for something to happen, but it never did. A boring story about a boring family. Some good plots were started but then I wondered--"What happened to .........?" Just plain BORING.

At the begining of the book, Ms. Nelson has the main character, who has just been released from prison in Larned (west central part of state), flying 191 miles from Kansas City (north east part of state) in 747!!! to Wichita (south central part of state) at an cruising altitude of 33,000 feet. (Why was he flying out of an airport that is located in Missouri??) He had been in prison for 5 years because he caused an accident at a stop light intersection that has not existed for about 25 years.

It is not possible to enjoy a book with so many inaccuracies. Strongly recommend that people toss it and tell the author to get her facts straight.