Lost Son [Hardcover]

M Allen Cunningham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 20, 2007

Spanning western Europe from 1875 to 1917 and presenting a gothic historical Paris that subverts our old assumptions regarding the City of Light, M. Allen Cunningham’s new novel brings a brooding atmosphere and human complexity to an intimate and imaginative portrait of one of the most uniquely sensitive artists of his time, a poet whose odd childhood and difficult early life will both fascinate and perhaps help explain his determination to stay true to his artistic vision at almost any cost. Here is Rainer Maria Rilke in the grip of his greatest artistic struggle: life itself.

Rilke’s gripping emotional drama as child, lover, husband, father, protégé, misfit soldier, and wanderer is framed by a haunted young figure, a researcher who, a century later, feels compelled to trace Rilke’s itinerant footsteps and those of Rilke’s fictional alter ego, the bewitched poet Malte Laurids Brigge. The result is an exploration of the forever imperfect loyalties we face in work and life, the seemingly immeasurable distances that can separate life and art, and the generational tensions between masters and admirers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Cunningham follows The Green Age of Asher Witherow (2004) with a dense novelization of the life of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. An account of Rilke's baptism gives over to a chronicle of his time in Paris, where he ruminates on life and befriends sculptor Auguste Rodin. From Rodin's residence, the narrative episodically follows Rilke from his days as a sickly military cadet and his meeting the writer Lou Andreas-Salome—his muse with whom he travels widely—to an interlude with Lord Chamberlain's skeleton in a crypt and eventually to the double heartbreak of Rilke's father's death and his final parting with Rodin, which inspires the poet to wall himself away behind his writer's desk. Cunningham is a talented writer, although unwelcome shifts into second-person and passages rife with adjective abuse mar this ambitious undertaking. (June)
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From Booklist

Technique remains popular in historical fiction. Rather than insert imaginary characters in historical settings where they interact with real historical figures, novelists are creating fictional biographies of real people. This can be a tricky approach because it mixes fact and fiction even more than usual for the genre. The approach can be particularly tricky when the subject is himself a writer. Should the fictional writer talk like the historical writer's writings? One of the ways this fictionalized biography of poet Rainer Maria Rilke attempts to overcome the problem is by mixing styles. The novel is a mix of first-, third-, and even second-person narration, as well as some of Rilke's actual writings. The result is itself mixed. Some passages are lyrical and moving; others seem unnecessarily dense. Fans of Rilke will be curious about this take on his life, but those not already interested are unlikely to find this a compelling starting point. Marta Segal
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Unbridled Books; 1 edition (May 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932961348
• ISBN-13: 978-1932961348
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,826,081 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Trusting what is difficult, November 11, 2007

By 

john newland (auburn, alabama) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost Son (Hardcover)

As one who has, for many years, loved the poetry and thought of Rilke, I found this to be a remarkable novel that succeeded wonderfully in capturing both the "magic" and the "empty too much" of Rilke as man and artist.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars insightful biographical fiction, May 26, 2007

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lost Son (Hardcover)

In 1902, twenty-six-year-old Rainer Maria Rilke has received a commission to write the definitive biography of the great sculptor Auguste Rodin. Accepting the work, Rainer leaves his wife and their newborn daughter behind in rural Germany seventeen grueling travel hours away from his new residence in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris. The rustic writer is overwhelmed by the city with its affluence and poverty side by side. He feels overwhelmed as his childhood nightmares of being a stranger amidst strange people frighten him, but mostly he fears failure as a poet, as a biographer, and as a writer. His abandoned family females give him moments of concern, but they tie back to his childhood, which he needs to escape from and find with his poetry and with his writing peer and muse Lou Salome.

This is an insightful biographical fiction of Rainer Maria Rilke, considered by many to be Germany's greatest twentieth century poet. The story line focuses obviously on Rilke from the opening baptism in Prague to his schism with Rodin in Paris, but also provides a discerning window into the artistic movements of Western Europe during the tumultuous first two decades of the twentieth century. The not chronological in order events lead to a more vivid astute look at the period, but also make it more difficult to follow the prime focus of the novel, the life of Rilke. This is an entertaining account of a poet whose haunting dark work makes many consioder Rilke as having one foot within the competing classical and another with the modernist movements.

Harriet Klausner

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Evocative of Rilke, October 1, 2008

By 

Nila J. Webster (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lost Son (Paperback)

Lost Son is a beautiful, poignant and moving novel, not only about the life of Rainer Maria Rilke, but also about the human struggle of the artist. Written in a style evocative of Rilke and his writing, this novel offers a poetic rendering of Rilke's journey: his wounds, his regrets, his conflicts, as well as his healing and his growth. From the outset, we see Rilke's acutely sensitive way of being: "But even at a glimpse, he looks a damaged vessel, as when he was a child. Something about him cleft bare and never closed. Twenty-six years in the world now, yet forever these countless cracks." Yet as the novel reveals, it is these precise cracks that allow for Rilke's most poetic response to the world.

We also see Rilke's struggle as a poet: "the poet wrestles with the need inside him. Need that incessantly makes itself felt but cowers when he gives it leave to come forth as work." He longs to write, yet writing itself is elusive, and we see this tension in many very intriguing relationships: with his wife Clara, his muse and lover, Lou Salome, his "master" and mentor, Auguste Rodin. As he struggles to have these human relationships, he struggles at the same moment for something that perhaps for him was even more sacred: solitude. The novel captures this strange and paradoxical condition, making Rilke and his work come alive for readers in a new and real way. We feel Rilke's presence upon the pages of Lost Son; we feel that we have come to know Rilke in a deeper and more personal way. I recommend this book most highly, not only for its beautiful and poetic writing, but for its portrayal of Rilke and of the human soul.