Customer Reviews

A Prayer for the Dying

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a truly gifted author. I became familiar with him when I read Snow Angels, and since then I have purchased nearly every book he has written. Each novel is an original piece. This novel, Prayer for the Dying is another stunning acomplishment. He takes the reader to post Civil War Wisconsin. His first person accounting is riveting as he takes you into the heart, mind and soul of Jacob Hansen, town sheriff, undertaker and pastor. Add to this odd mixture of occupations a devasting diptheria plague that threatens the town's human and animal population. A gentle, loving and spiritual family man, he must make horrendous decisions involving the township. While tradgedy befalls the town, he must cope with the possibility that he may have infected his beloved wife and baby daughter after undertaking the initial diptheria cases. Stewart O'Nan sets a thoroughly researched scene for the reader. You will walk through his surroundings and feel yourself in every step he takes, while you explore all his thoughts that challenge his faith and own mortality. An absolute masterpiece.

Sick of books that run out of steam around the the last 50 pages? This incredible novelette will knock you on your butt! This is no joke. If you haven't read a good horror book for a long time, and are sick of carbon-copy stories by King, Koontz and Rice, stop whatever you are reading and go pick this up! O'nan's story comes out of the clear blue nowhere and leaves you in awe the last 15 pages. You'll have to go back and re-read just to comprehend the scope of what he's just done to you, the reader. People in the field of horror might say that this has already been done before in stories like Faulkner's "A Rose For Emily", but as an overly avid reader of horror I promise you that O'nan's work is fresh, original, and very compelling. This has to be a strong contender for the Bram Stoker award. In most stories you are given the luxury of considering how you would act if you were the main character. In "Prayer for the Dying" you don't have a choice. YOU ARE THE MAIN CHARACTER!! My hat's off to O'nan.

I've just read for the third time this amazing book. It's as stunning a read the third time as the first. Told in the second person -- which, admittedly, can first be a bit disconcerting (with its hey-look-at-me-I-got-an-MFA-in-creative-writing pretensions) but that soon becomes an evocative part of the haunting prose -- the novel involves Jacob Hansen, sheriff, undertaker, and preacher to 1860s Friendship Wisconsin. Jacob's life is no pleasure cruise: he finds himself battling a terrible outbreak of diptheria that steals his town, his friends, his family; in addition, there's an out-of-control forest fire bearing town on his little town. Part horror story, part treatise on the nature of good and evil, on the choices we make, part poetry, the tale is unforgettable, one that will linger long after you've shut the book. There is a litany of horrific revealations toward end, each more shocking than the one before. You'll reel, you'll gasp, you'll read more. And that last line will ring loudest, reverberating in your mind for a long time to come.

In the end A Prayer for the Dying is all about decisions and how some choices are less choices than obligations. What O'Nan allows us to discover through Jake Hansen is that our goodness is sometimes contingent on circumstances (something most of us don't like to admit -- if we even bother to think about it in the first place).

Tremendous.

I came across this unusual novel by Stewart O'Nan quite by accident. I had never heard of the author or the book, and was simply browsing through one of my local bookstores one day, when the cover caught my eye -- something about it was familiar to me, although I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was.

I picked up the book and leafed through it, thought it looked interesting and took it home. I was drawn into the story immediately -- by O'Nan's unusual use of the second person narrative, certainly, but mainly by his amazing descriptive talents, both of scene and emotions. The story laid out here is a horrific one -- as are the choices faced by the main character. The novel, as life, never ties up all of the questions raised with easy answers -- O'Nan leaves that to the imagination and conscience of his reader, and I for one got a sense of respect from him in that aspect.

It was only after finishing the book that I realized what was familiar about the cover. On the page containing the publishing and cataloguing data, O'Nan credits Michael Lesy, author of the book 'Wisconsin death trip', as the source of the cover photo. I have that book, and another by Lesy, published in the early 70s, containing photographs and newspaper clippings from the era (and area) in which this novel takes place. O'Nan was inspired by the images and events contained in Lesy's book to give an expanded, fictionalized account of some of those events -- and he has done so to great effect.

Not the 'feel-good hit of the summer' by any means -- but I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes a well-written, challenging read.

Stewart O'Nan has constructed a miniature world with A PRAYER FOR THE DYING, and he peoples it and describes it so vividly that you nearly feel you are a part of it. This effect is all the more chilling when that world starts to implode.

A diptheria epidemic--something virtually unknown in modern times--is stealthily, then openly, decimating a small Wisconsin town. Jacob Hansen, who serves as a combination sheriff, undertaker and minister, is doing his level best to deal with his combination of duties in the face of the epidemic. He is a strong and silent type, a Civil War veteran, and he does what has to be done as many of the townspeople are stricken. By the time O'Nan reveals the subtle, horrifying breadth of the epidemic, he had me so involved that it nearly took my breath away.

This is an outstandingly fine novel--elegantly made, profound in its implications, and still reverberating in my mind weeks after I finished it.

Stewart O'Nan continues to gather momentum in establishing himself as one of the master writers of our time. His novel THE NAMES OF THE DEAD revealed insights into the Vietnam tragedy like few others have matched. He is able to explore the interstices of human behaviour and response to unthinkable tragedy with such clinical precision that at times his stories must be read again to take note of the eloquent lyricism of his writing gifts.

A PRAYER FOR THE DYING is in ways a metaphor for the Christ figure: one man is sent to absorb all the sins of the world, knowing that the end will be his own sacrifice/loss. Jacob Hansen strolls through his war-injured life as a constable/minister/undertaker in a small town of Friendship, WI post Cival War time. Gradually that stroll becomes a march toward the evils of diphtheria and a ravaging fire until the march becomes a race toward the inevitable destruction of all that is dear to him. Cosmic tragedy consumes him and it is this process where we find the heroism of the indomitable spirit. In Jacob's own words "If all of this has taught you anything, its that hope is easier to get rid of than sorrow." This book is small in size, short in pages, but overwhelmingly important in content. Here is a study in perspective for the harrowing times in which we now live.

As an avid reader I started out slow, disconcerted by the second person voice, but I quickly caught on. I won't go over the details mentioned in other reviews but I will mention one thing that caught my attention.

Although the writer never specifically states that all of the animal deaths in the book are due to the diphtheria epidemic (cows, dogs ect.) one is easily led to that conclusion. Animals, however, are not affected by diphtheria. When two widow ladies die of "Paris Green" poison it's clear that they've died from something other than diphtheria, it's even clear WHY they ingested the poison (conflict), but we're left to assume that the animals died of diphtheria.

I found myself feeling angry that Jacob didn't or couldn't follow the doctor's orders and use precautions with the first two bodies. I felt he was responsible for carrying the disease to his wife and daughter. It makes you think about how you would react in a similar circumstance. I felt his interior hopelessness, his personal demons left over from the Civil War made it impossible for him to act decisively and take precautions....acting with hope. His actions in not taking precautions leaves one with the sense that he felt the epidemic was inevitable. He reacts, he doesn't act.

As for the doctor, I felt he alone was responsible for the spread of the disease by also failing to act courageously. He feared REaction from the towns' people if he activated a widespread quarantine, and by the time that he did, it was simply to late. Often, acting with courage means making unpopular decisions. I would have liked to see him struggle more with it, as Jacob struggled with, but accepted, the lack of quarantine.

I feel this book is more of a commentary on human action and inaction, a drama we see playing itself out nearly every day. You're left to wonder if our current policies and government would act in a similar manner, without courage and without decision. I'd have to answer yes.

Although this book is set in the post-Civil War era, this book is an effective modern day commentary on society.

I'm not a reader of mainstream contemporary fiction. So much of it is badly written with characters who are wooden, formulaic and uninteresting. O'Nan's book is a shining exception in sea of mediocrity. Aside from my mild annoyance with one point of his style (his use of the second person in telling the story), the book was flawless and one of the best contemporary books I've ever read.

Many adjectives come to mind when I think about this novel: haunting, chilling, sad, intense, original, painful, horrifying, lyrical, disturbing, disorienting. The use of the second person narrative was an effective device for putting the reader within the story --- in the narrator's place, so to speak. The language was very lyrical, which somehow made the story even more chilling. After I finished reading the book, the first thing to enter my head was "Wow."

This novel is a haunting Gothic work. Both horrifying in it's description and circumstance, the second person point of view drags the reader into the mind of Jacob Hanson, even while the reader is begging to get out. Admit that at some point you identified with Jacob! But then turn away in revulsion! O'Nan's writing pulls us in while at the same time repelling us. A Prayer for the Dying is as beautiful as it is horrifying.