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Oxygen

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Andrew Miller has created a unique and beautiful novel about characters who are caught in regret and the human struggle. The interweaving story lines are subtle and beautiful, and will be meaningful to readers who wish to look beyond the obvious and see the interconnections of our existence. One of the profound themes of Oxygen calls to mind a phrase from American poet jani johe webster, who wrote so eloquently: "hoping not to leave/ this earth/ regretting." And so the main characters of the book, estranged brothers Larry and Alec, their dying mother Alice, and, in a different country, a talented but anguished playwright, experience this very struggle: the struggle to live in a way that will liberate them from their wounds and regrets. Andrew Miller took on a great challenge in creating a novel that exists outside the box, and the outcome is a beautiful and nuanced literary work.

There are books notable for their story, those notable for their writer's style and the rare book notable for the author's facility with language and grammar. This book is all three. The book tells the story of a group of disparate characters united superficially by their families, in one case, by work in another but much more profoundly by their shared humanity and attempts to survive their own weaknesses. One character tries to atone a much earlier failure when he let a lover die and another family tries to ease their mother's terminal illness while trying to come to terms with all they and their relationships to her are not.The plot hurries ominously onward but the fluidity of the writing finds you reading more slowly so to give its almost poetic quality its due. This is the sort of writing that I hope to be doing a lot more reading of in years to come.

The ink from Andrew Miller's pen flows with such natural grace and ease there's a hushed sense of intimacy in the rhythmn of his prose. The experience is not dissimilar to tuning into a confession. But don't read the blurb and jump to the conclusion that you're dealing with some overhyped angst ridden family drama belonging to that genre much beloved by British book critics. "Oxygen" is exceptional because its writer is not only gifted with an uncommon eloquence, he has the rare intuitive ability to connect with the reader in a manner suggesting a dangerous knowledge of the human heart and that is what makes the difference. Alice Valentine is dying of cancer. Her two sons, Larry and Alec, return to Brooklands to spend her last days with her. The family is not estranged but separated, Alice in the loneliness of her terminal illness, her golden boy Larry in the shameful aftermath of his collapsing marriage and career in America, and the listless Alec in his own sense of failure as he struggles on with his translation work for a Hungarian playwright. They harbour truths about themselves they're barely able to recognise let alone confront or articulate, so Alice's death scene becomes the perfect occasion for them to come together, resolve their differences, exorcise their demons and settle the score. This they do, but quietly - strictly no histrionics - and in ways you least expect. Lazslo's story may be linked with Alec's by a thin narrative thread but he shares with Larry and Alec the same need for courage and redemption. Whilst Larry's release comes unexpectedly one evening after Alice suffers a fall, Alec digs deep to find the resolve to perform the ultimate act of heroism. For Lazlo, he sheds the burden of guilt for letting his lover die in enemy hands during the 1956 Hungarian uprising when he agrees to act as courier for a political cause. By using contrasting settings (domestic and bohemian) for his two stories, Miller universalises the issues and achieves an impact far beyond his contemplation. "Oxygen" is hugely deserving of its Booker Prize & Whitbread Prize nominations and the many accolades heaped upon it. A minor masterpiece.

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When I first began Oxygen, I was taken in by the writing, by the author's deft use of words, his economy of language. I could tell right away that Miller knew how to work a pen (or, nowadays, a word processor). But I must confess that I wondered, for a while, if anything was really going to happen. There is certainly a story here (three in fact), but in all honesty, not that much happens. I was fully expecting this lack of grounded action to undermine the novel's rather deceptively simple and beautiful tone.

I am pleased to report that I was wrong.

Brothers Larry (moderately famous soap opera star gone to seed and trapped in a dying marriage with a klepto daughter who is, by all accounts, creepy in her emotionless demeanor) and Alec (the French translator who is perched on the edge of a life of tepid failures and regrets that mask themselves as hopes and dreams) find themselves forced to deal with the decline and inevitable demise of their mother, Alice, a strong-willed woman who is fighting a losing battle with cancer and the accompanying senility that comes with dying so messily.

This story is connected by a few thin (but strong threads) to the tale of the Hungarian playwrite, Lazar, who has a life that is successful, rich with meaning and love, and in all other ways, admirable. Still, of course, there is something missing -- something serious -- and it plagues Lazar with the same insinuating tenacity as the disease that plagues Alice (and, by proxy, her sons).

What makes this novel so remarkable (aside from Miller's ability to manipulate words in a manner that is as playful as it is revealing, as meaningful as it is masterful) is that whenever something solid and certain DOES happen -- something that could be called the undergirding of a crucial plot element -- it usually takes place either off screen or ambiguously. The firing of a gun, the taking of a pill, the indescretions of men and women: these are hinted at, heard from another room, suggested.

Miller doesn't just suggest events, he suggests reasons, he suggests outcomes, he suggests decisions. There are no easy answers in his book, and in place of predictable plot machinations or trite bits of drama, Miller gives us compellingly simple and real insights into the characters and how they view the various disintegrations of their respective worlds.

This is a return to true literature, I think, a lost art wherein the audience is not plied with the easy levers of emotive dialogue or overt symbolism. We are given what is there, and are left to make do with what we have. The endings to all four stories (Alice's, Larry's, Alec's, and Lazar's) are left open to interpretation. An optimist could probably see upswings all around, but it would be just as easy to argue that the stories are all bound to end sadly.

Either way isn't really the point, and that's the final and greatest thing about the novel. A true novel isn't really about what happens to the characters, it's about what the characters do and who they are. Miller seems to be suggesting a final and ultimate truth about humanity, that being that we are not our circumstances: we are how we respond to our circumstances. Viewed in that light, this book is truly a success, and the characters in it richer than the words used to describe them. They each end the novel taking deep breaths before stepping into the unknown.

If you're anything like me, you'll end the novel with the opposite: a sigh.

Three men caught in a crisis of life, two are related by blood and the other is related by his writing. Andrew Miller was a Booker Prize Finalist with his book, "Oxygen". Oxygen the element of life's breathing, so necessary in our life.

Alice Valentine has recurrent tumors in her chest that have metastasized to her brain. She is in the throes of death and her two sons need to see her soon. Alec is a struggling translator and is working on a book written by a Hungarian writer, Lazlo. Alec has never had an easy life; he has had to fight for what he needs and wants his entire life. Alec has a crisis in his life- how can he care for his mother and still lead the life he wants, Lazlo has everything he needs in life it seems, love, riches and a career in Paris. But, those close to him, understand that he allowed a young Hungarian to die during the Hungarian revolution is 1956. Lazlo cannot forget this, and there comes a time when he may be able to rectify this mistake. Lazlo has a crisis in his life and he needs to know he can overcome his mistake and live life a free man again. Larry is Alice's other son, and he lives in California. He has had a successful career as a television star, but that ended two years ago. Now he needs to pay his bills for his wife, Kristi and young daughter, Ella. Porn seems to be the answer for easy money. Larry and Kristi have a crisis in their marriage.

Alice is dying and everyone in her family wants to come together to celebrate her life and birthday. There is celebration, there is pain and there is the mundane everyday life of the men and the people they bring into their lives. Each of these men will be able to feel a sense of liberation from their actions. They will concentrate on love and loss and regret and self-discovery. Each of them will live and breathe Oxygen. Will Alice's dying bring the family closer together? How does the story of Lazlo's book, Oxyegen compare to the real life drama going on within the family? What of little Ella who steals "things" and hides them, and then becomes very quiet? What of Kristi and what she wants within the marriage? Does reconciliation bring the family closer? This is a skilled chronicle of the human mind and heart. This book leaves us gasping for more "Oxygen". Highly recommended. prisrob

Oxygen is the story of a family struggling to come together around the pending death of Alice, the mother, at her home in the lovely English countryside.
There are two sons. Larry, a former TV soap opera star who is sliding into the sleazy world of porn flicks in order to earn some much-needed money and salvage his dissolving marriage, is the more gregarious, outgoing brother. Alec is the shy and bumbling one who has never really left Mum, working as a translator and being jealous of his successful brother. He's presently at work translating a play by Laszlo Lazar, a Hungarian exile who's living the good life - but is haunted by his betrayal of comrades during the 1956 uprising when he was a member of an underground group of activists. Laszlo's parallel story, in which he's given an opportunity to atone for his past, runs alongside that of the English family and intersects it in odd ways.
Shifting between several locales - England, Paris, California, and Budapest - the author manages to hold it all together to create characters we really care about, even when they are not behaving well to each other. At the back of it all is Alice, watching while she's dying, and it's agonizing to live the story thru her eyes. This is a wise, warm, painful, and utterly engrossing novel.

A friend highly recommended the book, partly because - since I'm Hungarian - one of the characters is an aging Hungarian playwright in Paris who'd once fought in the '56 revolution.

Miller's writing style flows beautifully.

But it flows nowhere. There are two distinct stories - bridged by the the play Oxygene. In one story, the Valentine sons gather to be with their mother, Alice, who is dying of lung cancer (she was a smoker you see). One of the sons, Alec is also translating the play Oxygene (written by the aging Hungarian in Paris).

As Alice lies dying, Laszlo the Hungarian playwright is enjoying life in Paris with his young lover, rubbing facial cream into his skin to rejuvenate it, and mourning his lack of bravery during the revolution when he failed to save a dear friend.

Oxygen is presumably the symbolic bridge that connects the two parts of this book since there's absolutely no other connection between the Valentines' story and Laszlo's story. We breathe oxygen you see to live. Alice is dying because she can no longer breathe. And so forth. A somewhat strained metaphor.

The journey through a tale is made exciting and meaningful by an emerging character arc: there was next to none for the characters in this book.

Maybe I"m old fashioned. I like a story. And I think I'm tired of reading books about dysfunctional families, and the failed 'average man'. No matter how nice the writing style.

This novel about choices and consequences is one of the most beautifully written family dramas ever, and Laszlo Lazar is one of the most memorable characters in recent literature. I found the story line haunting and could not keep these people's lives and interactions out of my mind. Anyone who enjoyed "The Corrections" or any of Michael Cunningham or Colm Toibin's work will find this one equally involving. I really hated to see it end, but of course the ending itself is to be savored. Sad but ultimately uplifting, this Booker Prize finalist is one for the ages.

In his third novel, Andrew Miller leaves behind the 18th-century England of his previous work and gives us a story set in the summer of 1997. Miller deserves credit for taking action to avoid being typecast as only a writer of historical fiction: he clearly excels at much more.

In "Oxygen" Miller sets himself the challenge of scripting a novel that incorporates several different plot threads, some of which eventually intertwine, some of which never do. The story comes alive thanks to a cast of credibly flawed characters: in California, washed-up British actor Larry Valentine is battling debt and drugs in what seems a doomed effort to save his marriage, while back in England his mother Alice, in the last phase of terminal cancer, is being cared for by her other son, Larry's weak-kneed younger brother Alec. Still struggling to find direction in his life after romantic failure and a breakdown of his own, Alec is engaged in translating "Oxygène", the latest play by celebrated Hungarian exile László Lázár. In Paris, Lázár himself hosts dinner parties with his lover Kurt and a handful of old friends, blissfully unaware that his life is about to be turned upside down.

I felt "Oxygen" to be a novel about challenges, about promises kept and unkept, about people who find courage within themselves to an extent that would surprise all who knew them, and about people who let others down when they least expect it. Before the story is over all of Miller's characters have been challenged in some way or another - and their reactions are often surprising, but sometimes, sadly, just what we would expect of them. Adept at characterization, Miller makes his cast live and breathe to a degree few authors can match, and his talent for travel writing was an unexpected treat: whether narrating Lázár's movements across Paris or Larry's hilarious commuter plane flight in California, he makes you feel like you're there. A novel about challenges, then, that was itself a challenge to create - one the author has met admirably.

Let me preface by saying this was my first Andrew Miller novel. Based on the description and the reviews I'd read on Amazon, I was looking forward to an exhilarating reading experience. Well, I didn't get it. You probably know the threads of the story: several, unrelated plot lines where each character is challenged. If I cared to, I could discern the links between them all; however, I just did not care enough about the story or the characters to pull the threads together. All through the story, I felt that Miller was just on the edge of taking the plunge to explore these characters more fully, but it never happened. Some characters were well drawn, such as Laszlo and even Larry, but the others were not fully realized. Since the novel had "Finalist for the Booker Prize" emblazoned on its label, I expected more.