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Title: So Brave, Young and Handsome: A Novel
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Manufacturer: Atlantic Monthly Press
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| So Brave, Young and Handsome: A Novel by Atlantic Monthly Press If Jesus Were A Cowboy, He'd Wear A Black Hat | If you know anything about Leif Enger, then you know that his first book, Peace Like a River, is a deeply spiritual journal of a family torn apart by revenge, regret, and the sometimes painful steps required for redemption. Filled with wild west sentimentality, and narrated with a genuinely funny and bittersweet simplicity, it is, in all ways, just a really really really good book. It won several awards, was on numerous bestseller lists, and I believe a movie version is slated for release next year (starring Billy Bob Thornton).
Seven years later...
Funny thing, the protagonist of SO BRAVE, novelist Monte Becket, also wrote a hugely popular book (MARTIN BLIGH), but, five years later, doesn't have a clue how to follow it up. He sits on his porch, encouraged by his well-meaning and precocious son and prodded by his lovely wife, as he brings to limping life seven different novels, only to cut them dead before they prove him to be, in fact, a one-hit wonder.
Into his crumbling writer career floats Glendon Hale, an outlaw who has aged into obscurity, although not far enough in to escape the eyes of the law or the regrets of his past. When Hale befriends the Becket family and then decides to go on a journey to make right the wounds he created with his banditry, Monte comes along for the ride. One man is hoping to heal his history; the other man is trying to find a true path to his future.
I want to compare SO BRAVE to Enger's wonderful first book, but I won't. It's easy to read between the lines and see that Enger, here, is worried about such comparisons proving to be unfavorable. I will say if you haven't read PEACE LIKE A RIVER, then you should wait, and read it second.
Because SO BRAVE is a great book. Enger's uncanny ability to make the narration spool out with a dusky, western drawl is addictive. You may find yourself speaking to friends with a cowboy's twang after reading just a few of this book's very thin chapters. He certainly paints a vivid and absorbing world.
The story, however, needs some reins. Enger, as evidenced by both books, seems to have a soft-spot in his heart for the well-meaning fugitive. For an author who unflinchingly wears his religion on his sleeve, it is interesting to see that the characters he seems to love the most are the ones who have the most to regret. Much like Jesus, who was his own kind of criminal in the days of the Saducees, Enger's heroes flaunt their world's laws, butting heads with convention in the hope of finding truth and salvation. Maybe not with as much selflessness as Jesus, though.
As a result, SO BRAVE reads a lot like a grown man's HUCK FINN. Two lost souls (one with their mistakes behind, one looking at a world of mistakes ahead) float down rivers, jump off moving trains, get into high noon shoot-outs, and even endure a flood. It's an adventurous novel, but without adventure's sobering scope. Instead, Enger has given us a daisy chain of clever and creative events; some of them contribute to the novel's themes. Some of them are just fun or funny. Some of them (like the last five chapters), seem like giant, necessary anchors, dragging the whole thing to a creeping crawl. Even though the final chapters only take up about 14 pages of writing, and even though they are concisely used to tie up loose ends, it felt to me like Enger simply couldn't conceive of a way to bring the rest of the book's free-spirited aura into the events that were needed to bring it all to a satisfying close.
In spite of this, I closed the cover with the bittersweet feeling that all great books impart. A delicious sense of closure, coupled by a sadness that the journey is over. Enger is a fantastic writer, and his sophomore effort only proves that he still has a lot left in him. Here's hoping both he and Monte find the words they need to keep the stories coming. And faster this time, Enger. Faster. | | So Brave, Young and Handsome: A Novel by Atlantic Monthly Press Novel of Lost Youth and Experience | | This book is like a road movie where the travelers wonder through the West trying to find something they are looking for without really looking for it. A man with a criminal past looks for his abandoned wife followed by an author whose fame was fleeting and died out long ago. They are captured by an ex-Pinkerton who tries to take them back for a murder they committed. This is an interesting novel and very touching. | | So Brave, Young and Handsome: A Novel by Atlantic Monthly Press Enjoyable if not Entirely Credible | Leif Enger's "So Brave, Young and Handsome" started slow for me. It begins with the narrator, Monte Becket, an author who cannot recapture the magic of writing a book outside his rustic Minnesota home adjacent to a river when he meets Glendon Hale. Enger tries to give us some Monte Becket back-story: the saintly-supportive wife, his whipper-snapper of a child named Redstart, his failed attempts at writing a second novel.
Without giving too much away, Glendon Hale sweeps into the Becket's lives and just like a flowing river, Monte is caught up with Glendon as Glendon resolves to right a wrong.
There's a bit of Huck Finn in the river travels of Glendon and Monte but I found myself in danger of not finishing the book. In the first place, I do not understand Becket's motivation in wanting to go with Glendon Hale and his continuing insistence to do so when he should do nothing else but go back to his wife. This may be my failing as I failed to grasp a very similar concept in the movie World Traveler starring Billy Crudup.
Given Enger's inability to convincingly give Monte Becket proper motivation, I believe Enger's book would have actually worked better if he set it in medias res - specifically at the point where Becket, standing on the dock and having the choice to get in Hale's boat or to go back inside, he gets on Hale's boat.
The plot fortunately picks up with the addition of two capable characters in detective/vigilante Charles Siringo and handyman Hood Roberts. In a peculiar way, I was more interested in Siringo and Hood Roberts than I was with Monte Becket and especially Glendon Hale.
Still, in spite of the failings of the ostensible 2 main characters, "So Brave, Young and Handsome" is at heart a tale of redemption set in the twilight of the "wild" West. As such, it was enjoyable fare. | | So Brave, Young and Handsome: A Novel by Atlantic Monthly Press Not for me | | I loved Mr. Enger's first book so much that I took a chance on this one without having any idea what it was about. It's a western, and not my kind of book, unfortunately. I started it, but lost interest very quickly. The writing is good, it's the subject matter that doesn't work for me. | | So Brave, Young and Handsome: A Novel by Atlantic Monthly Press Where Have All The Westerns Gone? | | Pioneer and Western stories have always had a place in my heart since reading the wonderful stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Willa Cather and being brought up watching the wonderful TV westerns of he 1950s and 60s.I always welcome a new voice in western fiction. As much as I loved Enger's Peace Like a River, he has followed it up with a book that may be even better. He infuses his voice to a remarkable story that puts him up there with Larry McMurtry as the modern voice giving readers a glimpse of the late 19th and early 20th C. His rich characterizations and storytelling ability will not disappoint those who have been anxiously awaiting another Leif Enger book. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next. He's a true American original. I can't recommend this highly enough! | | So Brave, Young and Handsome: A Novel by Atlantic Monthly Press Product Description | A stunning successor to his best selling novel Peace Like a River, Leif Enger’s new work is a rugged and nimble story about an aging train robber on a quest to reconcile the claims of love and judgment on his life, and the failed writer who goes with him.
In 1915 Minnesota, novelist Monte Becket has lost his sense of purpose. His only success long behind him, Monte lives simply with his wife and son. But when he befriends outlaw Glendon Hale, a new world of opportunity and experience presents itself. Glendon has spent years in obscurity, but the guilt he harbors for abandoning his wife, Blue, over two decades ago, has lured him from hiding. As the modern age marches swiftly forward, Glendon aims to travel back to his past--heading to California to seek Blue’s forgiveness. Beguiled and inspired, Monte soon finds himself leaving behind his own family to embark for the unruly West with his fugitive guide. As they desperately flee from the relentless Charles Siringo, an ex-Pinkerton who’s been hunting Glendon for years, Monte falls ever further from his family and the law, to be tempered by a fiery adventure from which he may never get home. | | So Brave, Young and Handsome: A Novel by Atlantic Monthly Press Amazon.com | | Amazon Significant Seven, April 2008: A gritty western couched in the easy storytelling style of a folk ballad (think 3:10 to Yuma as sung by the Kingston Trio), Leif Enger's highly anticipated second novel (his first was Peace Like a River) tells the story of outlaw Glendon Hale's quest to right his past, as seen through the eyes of his unlikely companion Monte Becket. So Brave, Young, and Handsome begins with Becket, a struggling novelist bewildered by the success of his first book, who has pledged to his wife, son, and publisher to "write one thousand words a day until another book is finished." Four years and six unfinished novels later, Becket sits on the porch of his Minnesota farmhouse about to give up on number seven, when he spies a man standing up in his boat "rowing upstream through the ropy mists of the Cannon River." Eager to set aside his waning tale about handsome ranch hand Dan Roscoe, Becket calls out to the mysterious white-haired boatman and his life changes forever. At turns merry and wistful, romantic and tragic, So Brave, Young, and Handsome is as absorbing as a campfire tale, full of winking outlaws and relentless villains--the sort of story to keep you on the edge of your seat with hope in your heart. --Daphne Durham |
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