Reviews
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know! I loved most of this, it’s true. I think it’s a stellar exercise for a writer who has so successfully incorporated whimsy and insanity and unsettling action into his stories to take on the telling of an unremarkable life and it’s unexpected beauty and poignancy. And for the most part he succeeds! But then you get to that third section, the 1945 piece. Maybe it’s too fresh and I don’t see its point yet, but it feels like it was tacked on because his editors didn’t think the book was “Patrick deWitt-ish” enough. I love it when his stories are whimsical and feature oddball characters in absurd situations, but this felt superfluous in the context of the larger, more gentle and realistic story. I can’t tell how it is meant to inform Bob’s future life or his character’s development, if it does at all. I would encourage anyone to read this; most of us lead what are ultimately pretty unremarkable lives, and I think there’s beauty and nobility in Bob’s story and deWitt tells it extraordinarily well. But I would suggest skipping the 1945 piece altogether. I don’t think you’d come away worse for doing so. It would make a great standalone short story in the New Yorker or something, but it feels extraneous here.
This one grew on me…a quiet book that’s deeper than it first appears.
