Customer Reviews

Long for This World: A Novel

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It looks like I'm the first person to review this novel, so let me start by saying that I don't know Michael Byers or his publishers, and I have no vested interest in the success of his book. You can trust me, then, when I tell you how much I enjoyed it. I admired Byers's first book, The Coast of Good Intentions, tremendously---perhaps the richest, most tender and humane story collection of the past five years---and I have been wondering for some time when we would see something new from him. Now I see why it's taken so long. Long for This World is a big, delicately rendered book with a deep and expansive sense of its characters and the world they inhabit. It has all the strengths of his story collection. The prose is easy and precise, polished in a way that never calls too much attention to itself, and the people he creates never seem less than authentic. A few of his characters are science fiction readers, and while there are none of the conventional trappings of science fiction in this book, occasionally a mood of fantasy creeps in at the very edges, as though the world is threatening to burst open and become something no one ever could have expected. Michael Byers isn't the sort of writer who can do everything (the momentum of his stories can be very slow, and I'll confess that there are times when my interest in Long for This World seemed to lag behind his own), but what he does do, he does very, very well. That is, he lends careful, sympathetic consideration to the minds of his characters and to every detail and color of what passes through them. His books seem to be written according to the same philosophy that's expressed by one of his characters toward the end of the novel---"not that it was bad luck to waste things, but that anything that existed was too precious to waste." The best thing about Long for This World is that it makes you experience that preciousness for yourself.

Astounding! This book absolutely blew me away, and is probably one of the best books of the year so far. Byers has a gorgeously simplistic, elegant and, at the same time economical writing style that just sweeps you along. Not only does he manage to recreate such vivid realistic characters, but also develop a story that just commands your attention. What a talent Michael Byers is with an epic, intellectual and beautiful style that is very reminiscent of Michael Cunningham and Julia Glass. So convincing is Byers portrayal of suburban, American middle-class life that you could be mistaken for thinking that Henry, Isla, and their two children, Sandra and Darren are real people. I must confess that although I new what Hickman's disease was, I knew very little about it, so this book was a real education for me. And Byers doesn't swamp us with unnecessary scientific jargon on genetics - he gives us just enough information so that we get the drift of what is going on. The story is just a heartbreaking in its account of what people like William and his family go through in trying to cope with this illness.

Much of the novel takes place in 1999 in Seattle during the dot.com boom, and one gets a real sense of the money that people were making during this time. The story also gives us a sense that this excess can't continue forever, and that the bubble must eventually burst. I think this novel works on many, many levels, provoking serious thought about modern American life - its excesses, and America's obsession with money and materialism. The novel also provides a stunning portrayal of the Seattle, which at the time faced an uncertain future with lots of civic change taking place. Through Henry, Byers effectively juxtaposes materialistic obsessions with the amazing abilities that humans can have for love, compassion and self-sacrifice and the lengths that people will go to show this. Byers places us in Henry's position and asks us the central question of what lengths would we go to save a life -a life that is probably doomed anyway. The novel also gives us an interesting insight into the legalities of gene research, and much of the story is devoted to the somewhat cold-hearted buying and selling of genetic stock.

Of all the characters though, it is Isle who is perhaps the most interesting. As a new immigrant from Austria, she comes to America with a fresh eye and some interesting and funny views on the country. All the characters, both major and minor, have something to offer this story and the reader. But it is Isle's path towards self-discovery that resonates long after you have finished the book. Long for This World is a remarkable piece of work!

Michael

What a wonderful surprise this book is! Michael Byers shows that he can bring his gift for short-story writing to a novel, and the characters explode deep and fully-developed from the first line and grow from there. The result is a very fine and moving read.

Henry Moss is a research doctor working on Hickman, a condition that causes children to age rapidly and die prematurely. As he tests the DNA of a new patient's family, he discovers that the boy's 17-year-old brother has a blood mutation that might permit him to stop the syndrome's deadly progress. He is faced with the most human of dilemmas when he must decide whether to try the new enzyme on a dying child before testing is even begun. A very kind and decent man, Henry is wracked by the possibilities he faces: he may lose his license, he may save a life, or he may become incredibly rich-a possibility he sees all around him in mid-90's Seattle where the book is set.

Everyone in "Long for this World" is a marvelous creation. Henry's Austrian wife, Ilse, has a story of her own and a martinet mom who has moved to a nearby condo. His daughter is a gifted athlete, and his son a sweet, goofy 14-year-old. You become engrossed in the lives of his favorite Hickman patient and his family, and in the family of the strange atypical-positive teenager who is the catalyst for so much hope.

"Long for this World" will entrance everyone who picks it up because of its humanity, humor, and warmth. This is exemplary fiction not to be missed.

You might not want to read this astounding book in public. It is so funny that you'll burst out laughing, and so sad you'll weep. But mostly, it is a beautiful book, the story of ordinary, good-hearted people trying to do right in a confusing world. Its plot concerns life and death medical matters, but one of its themes is the Secret Life. Each character follows a potent, secret passion that remains hidden from but influences his or her family and public life. But these are not melodramatic secrets: they're the secrets most of us keep, and far from destroying the family that's at the center of this book, these secrets infuse it with new life and vitality. This is a book about mystery, but not just medical mystery: it delves into the mystery of what it means to be alive and how to make sense of the world. Long for this World fills the reader with a sense of hope and transcendence that lingers long after the book's been finished.

I read this book in four days--100 pages a day--while I was working a really dull temp job, and so when I think of this novel, when I recommend it to friends, when I read aloud to them from it (as I already have), it'll be partly because I'm grateful to Michael Byers for infusing those four days of time-crawling numbness with the kind of giddy joy that comes with reading a really good book. Suddenly life wasn't so grim. There were possibilites. Byers' book of stories was terrific, so I'm not surprised his first novel is so full-bodied and alive. (He reminds me of early Updike; bursting at the seams with love for the tactile world and its inhabitants.) Some folks were just born to write. But now of course, comes that terrible dilemma: What to read after a really wonderful book? What could possibly match its pleasures? You're all luckier than me---you still have this novel before you. Waiting. So go. Enjoy.

In the middle of reading Michael Byers' "Long For This World," (what a wonderful title with multiple meanings!) I had to look again to see where he lived and guess how old he is. Sure enough, he's a Seattle native, just like Henry Moss and me, but how could he have gotten Henry's memories of growing up here so right? (I'm seven years older than Henry and a lot older than Byers.) I was away for years, but I moved back in 1997, saw Seattle at the peak of its swagger, and have experienced the fall that, oddly enough, only William and Ilse's elderly mother foresaw in the book. Seattle in 1999 is one of the main characters in this wonderful book, and Byers gives it to us perfectly (except for one bird that does not live here). It's not just the major characters, the Moss family and their associates, who ring true. He also catches three-dimensionally the girl who leads on fourteen year old Darren Moss for the heck of it, the neighbor no one knows whose suicide reverberates throughout the book, even the forty-five year old Microsoft multimillionaire retiree too bored to have sex in his expensively renovated house, to the stooped elderly Asian women carrying their string bags of produce in Chinatown International District, whose lives have been bypassed by all the wealth.

In a way, the Moss family has been bypassed by the wealth too, and that's an important element of the plot. Henry and Ilse see that the serendipitous result of Henry's years of research on Hickman kids might make them as rich as their neighbors and allow her to finally do what she wants. But ethics extend beyond medicine here, as the evil of greed and the good of Henry's love of William tempt them both to do something they both know is wrong. Henry's fear of what might happen to him if he's caught is as great as William's fear of dying. This is a great story about a family, a great story about the value of medical research. But it is finally a great story about the great good and the great evil that humans are capable of, and how to balance the one against the other.

I haven't been moved enough by a book to post a review on Amazon for several year, but "Long for this World" hit me in just quite the right way.

Other posters have already summarized the plot. Suffice it to say that these characters are so finely and lovingly drawn as to stun you. I can think of only a few novels from recent memory where the characters have truly stayed with me - Ford's "The Sportswriter" and "Independence Day," as well as "The Corrections" come to mind, and just a few others.

I would simply ask that anyone who loves the pleasures of a fine novel - please read this book.

This is the best book I have read in a long time. Byers writes with precision about everything!! How can he know so much about life? The characters are authentic and endearing! His prose is captivating! Themes are interwoven--medical ethics; genetics; fate; life purpose; family. DAys after you finish the book, you think about Henry Moss and marvel that advancement in medicine would not be possible without the passion and dedication of hundreds of physician researchers like him.

The first Michael Byers book I ever read was his debut collection of short stories, THE COAST OF GOOD INTENTIONS, a treasure trove of delicate stories about the Pacific Northwest (where I was born, raised and continue to live). I met him briefly at a book fair the year it was published, 1998, and was fascinated by his approach to writing, his quiet intentions, and his tale of agents and "book people" already nagging him to write a novel. It's now 2003 and that novel is finally here, LONG FOR THIS WORLD, a compassionate and heartfelt book about middle-class existence in dot.com Seattle in the 1990s, centering on medical ethics and the lengths to which we will go for the ones we love.

Dr. Henry Ross is a geneticist living in Seattle with his loving family. Day after day he studies Hickman syndrome, a heinous medical condition that causes rapid aging and premature death in children. His wife, Ilse, is going through a midlife crisis, wondering why she shifted from doctoring the elderly to hospital administration. Their children are developing lives of their own --- Sandra with basketball and Darren with young love. Dr. Ross has stumbled upon a possible cure for the syndrome he has studied his whole life and weighs the ethics of performing it on one of his young patients. It could be a gold mine --- not only for the medical profession, but also for the financial well-being of the Ross family. However, he could also lose his license and face monumental legal troubles.

What makes this story so interesting is not the plot per se. That's not to say the plot isn't important or moving. It does indeed make the reader want to move from chapter to chapter to more fully understand Dr. Ross's dilemma and see what will happen to his young patient. What makes the story so intriguing is the characters themselves. They are as real as your next-door neighbors or your co-worker in the cubicle next to you. The reader lives in the Ross house, learns of their struggles and their happiness, understands their concerns, cheers them on when they do well, and empathizes with them when they don't. Some story lines are more involving than others (Henry and Ilse have stronger story lines and more vibrant personalities then their children do), but ultimately the novel is about family --- what it takes to keep this unit together and the relationships strong and healthy.

Byers, however, writes with such fluidity that the story sometimes flows too smoothly, like a river without ripples. It certainly moves forward to its destination and it's a pleasant ride, but LONG FOR THIS WORLD could sometimes benefit from more ripples and bends in the river.

--- Reviewed by Jonathan Shipley

A doctor discovers a possible cure for a rare disease, then administers it to a favorite patient without waiting for approval. He feels justified because the patient is dying anyway, but also figures he'll get rich if the cure works. So begins the basic story in this book. While not especially original, it might be crafted into a solid short novel of 150 to 200 pages. Trouble is, this book goes on about 3 times as long. The many digressions on the experiences of the doctor's relatives, neighbors, etc. add little or nothing to the central story. Few of the digressions are very interesting in and of themselves. I can see this as a good book for people in the medical and related fields, but even they might want to skip many sections.