45 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I hate Ethan Canin because..., January 8, 2003
...my wife used to work at Houghton Mifflin whose vaunted Trade Division published Ethan Canin when he first started. All the 25 year old women of HMCO were in love with this guy who wrote beautifully, was excessively handsome (see book jacket and be your own judge...what do I know?) and was slumming at Harvard Medical School to become an MD. OK, so it has taken me about 12 years of marriage before I could bring myself to pick up Dr. Canin's work. And what do I think?
Not too bad. If you like terrific writing. If you are a fan of great American story tellers like Fitzgerald, O'Hara, Cheever.
If you like baseball. If you have ever been part of a family. If you are left brained or for that matter right brained...well you get the picture. I concede. This Canin dude has it all, and I recommend you add him to your reading table.
(Just don't let your wife see the bookjacket.)
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Each Story Deserves a Rating, March 14, 2007
It's not easy to assign one rating to this book. It's not a novel--it's a compilation for four stories, each about 50 pages in length. The stories vary in quality and deserve to be looked at independently, though there are some common themes. For one, all of Canin's narrators are male. Second, baseball is mentioned more than once. Finally, all his characters seem to be supremely flawed, which I guess is the author's attempts at making them more realistic, but the characters never actually seem real. In three of the stories the narrators seem to suffer from the same flaw--they're arrogant and stupid. They get themselves into the type of predicaments you expect from network sit-coms. It left me wondering if the author is giving us insight to his own personality, or if this is just how a doctor who attended Harvard views the rest of us.
The four stories included are:
The Accountant (2 stars): The story is narrated by the titular accountant. Two childhood friends grow apart when one chooses college and the other goes directly into the workforce. The story is about the mistakes the accountant has made in life and the smug attitude that prevents him from realizing his missteps.
Batorsag and Szerelem (2 stars): This one is a coming-of-age tale narrated by a boy whose eccentric brother is extremely good at math. The older brother is also hiding something from his family. This story had a ton of potential, but I just felt like it wasn't executed well at all. It jumps around a lot and there's not enough character development. I believe there was enough story here for a novel; the author just didn't take the time.
City of Broken Hearts (4 stars): This one is a well-written, somewhat tragic story about a man in his sixties who is recently divorced and having trouble adapting to single life as well as relating to women and his son, who is attending college on the other side of the country. When the son visits his father in Boston, the two go to a ball game together, since baseball is the old man's passion. The father in this story is a sympathetic character. It's easy to understand his confusion and frustration. His baseball team lets him down, his wife has left him for another man, and his son is arrogant and so interested in proving he's a modern, sympathetic man that he doesn't take time to let his father remain part of his life.
The Palace Thief (5 stars): The best story in the bunch. A young teacher at a prestigious prep school feels some sympathy for a troubled student, which leads to him making some errors in judgement. The story revolves around their teacher-student relationship, as well as their relationship 40 years later. All of the stories in the book are compelling, but this one is the best. The main character is still flawed, arrogant, and perhaps stupid in his choices, but this novel offers the best character study and it's easily the stand out of the bunch.
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32 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful human drama., December 2, 2002
Let's face it folks: All stories have already been told. In fact, the Greeks nailed down about every possible archetypal character, conflict and plot over 2,000 years ago. So, bashing this book for being "trite" or "banal" essentially bashes every modern work of fiction. The value of literature, then, becomes how well something is done rather than how original it is. What these snobby critics (i.e. The New York Times) simply can't stand is that Canin's methods are entirely anti-postmodern. If you're into literary trickery a la David Foster Wallace or Paul Auster or Thomas Phynchon you had better stay clear of these gorgeous stories about human beings (rather than talking dogs). This is exactly what literature should be. The stories are about the characters, not the author. Writers like Wallace and Pynchon want you to remember the author. So much of postmodern fiction is about the author and the author's baggage, all rendered in a self-serving mess of psychological confession and silly pop-art trendiness. Canin's writing is about telling a profound story with beautiful language. God forbid! Canin is willing to subordinate fake originality to a supreme understanding and mastery of the world's most noble craft. American fiction needs more writers like this, willing to embrace the fundamentals of literature rather than faddish trickery. Very impressive.
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