Undiscovered Country

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More About This Book

Overview

Unaware that his life is about to change in ways he can't imagine, seventeen-year-old Jesse Matson ventures into the northern Minnesota woods with his father on a cold November afternoon. Perched on individual hunting stands a quarter-mile apart, they wait with their rifles for white-tailed deer. When the muffled crack of a gunshot rings out, Jesse unaccountably knows something is wrong-and he races through the trees to find his dad dead of a rifle wound, apparently self-inflicted.

But would easygoing Harold Matson really kill himself? If so, why?

Haunted by the ghost of his father, Jesse delves into family secrets, wrestles with questions of justice and retribution, and confronts the nature of his own responsibility. And just when he's decided that he alone must shoulder his family's burden, the beautiful and troubled Christine Montez enters his life, forcing him to reconsider his plans.

In spare, elegant prose, Lin Enger tells the story of a young man trying to hold his family together in a world tipped suddenly upside down. Set among pristine lakes and beneath towering pines, Undiscovered Country is at once a bold reinvention of Shakespeare's Hamlet and a hair-bristling story of betrayal, revenge, and the possibilities of forgiveness.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

With flashes of prose as crisp and haunting as the frozen Minnesota setting, Enger's debut opens 10 years after Jesse Matson's father's alleged suicide, as 17-year-old Jesse sits down to write his own version of events. While hunting with his father in the woods surrounding their hometown of Battlepoint, Minn., the young Jesse hears a shot and finds his father dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. Adamant that his father could never take his own life, Jesse determines to uncover the truth. While his mother, Genevieve, retreats to her room and his younger brother, Magnus, looks to him for reassurance, Jesse becomes convinced that his uncle Clay actually killed his father. Despite a lack of evidence or support from law enforcement, Jesse hatches a plan to avenge his father's death, bolstered by his deepening relationship with a girl who has plenty of problems of her own. Allusions to Hamlet and Hemingway's In Our Time(Jesse reads both in school) do a little too much foreshadowing, but the landscape is beautifully rendered, and Jesse's confusion is palpable. (July)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
VOYA
Enger's first novel pays homage to Shakespeare's Hamlet, with parallels that might seem heavy-handed to some. Yet from the setting to the characters, Enger's prose is elegant while remaining humble. Jesse Matson, the protagonist, weaves his narrative as an adult looking back on the years following his father's death. Harold Matson, mayor of the Matson's small Minnesota town and the owner of the medieval-styled restaurant Valhalla, is found dead on a hunting trip with his son-gunshot to the head. It is no coincidence that the restaurant has its own life-sized Viking-Hamlet takes place in Denmark and the reference to Valhalla is clearly reflective of Harold Matson's fate. Like Prince Hamlet, Jesse does not accept his father's suicide and suspects that his uncle Clay (the parallel to Claudius) is the murderer. His suspicions grow when his father's ghost appears to him demanding retribution. The themes of the novel mirror the play as well. Is revenge just? What constitutes incest? Does vengeance destroy? And although every character from Shakespeare's work appears in some form in this novel, these comparisons are not tiresome. Likewise the sense of justice in the novel-despite heavy foreshadowing-seems subtle in delivery and even comes as a surprise. The ramifications of Jesse's actions remain somewhat cloudy, although it is clear that vengeance and lack of forgiveness bleeds his soul. Enger's novel offers a successful modernization of the classic play that may attract new readers to Shakespeare and at the very least offers a pleasing companion or introduction to Hamlet. Reviewer: Erin Kilby
More Reviews (3) Fewer Reviews
Library Journal

In his debut novel, Enger, director of the MFA in creative writing program at Minnestoa State University, Moorhead, tells a modern-day Hamlet story set in rural northern Minnesota. Teenage Jesse's father, the mayor of Battlepoint, apparently committed suicide with his own hunting rifle. But Jesse suspects his Uncle Clay, who had more than one motive for murder. Is Jesse's suspicion simply his inability to accept his father's senseless act? Or is Clay really guilty-and how complicit is Jesse's mother? If Clay is guilty, what should he do about it? The obvious parallels with Shakespeare's play are even acknowledged by some of the characters, but Enger doesn't let this conceit overwhelm the story. He skillfully draws a portrait of small-town life and all its barely concealed secrets and effectively narrates Jesse's torment. One might wish for more ambiguity in the question of Clay's guilt, and the book's concluding chapters are a bit of a stretch, though thankfully they contain a little less bloodshed than the source material. Recommended for public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ3/15/08; Lin Enger is the brother of novelist Leif Enger.]
—Christine DeZelar-Tiedman

School Library Journal

Adult/High School

In his most famous soliloquy, Hamlet speaks of that dread of something after death, "the undiscover'd country, from whose bourn no traveler returns," and this dread is realized beautifully in Enger's debut novel. While hunting deer in the northern Minnesota woods on a cold November afternoon, Harold Matson dies of a single grisly gunshot wound to the head. The local officials deem the death a suicide, but 17-year-old Jesse is convinced that his Uncle Clay is responsible for his father's death. The teen is visited by his father's ghost, has a girlfriend whose personal torment could give Ophelia a run for her money, and a bumbling/developmentally delayed relative (Clay's brother-in-law) who knows the truth about two murders for which Clay was responsible. But the elegantly written novel amounts to much more than just its allusions: Enger has taken a classic tale of betrayal, murder, justice, confusion, and forgiveness and created a story that will appeal to any teen who has experienced love and loss or grappled with dark family secrets. Readers might be left wondering what Hamlet would have been like had he survived. Less tragic perhaps, but he would have had an abundance of material for a career as a writer.-Jennifer Waters, Red Deer Public Library, Alberta, Canada

Kirkus Reviews
A debut novel of murder, sexual intrigue and revenge that deliberately channels Hamlet. Jesse Matson tells his story in retrospect. Ten years before, his father, Harold, seemed to have killed himself while hunting with Jesse-at least suicide was ruled the official cause of death-but Jesse is suspicious. Shortly before this incident his father, mayor of the town of Battlepoint, Minn., and owner of the Valhalla restaurant, had made the controversial decision to use a budget surplus to provide low-income housing for workers, housing that was supposed to go on land currently occupied by a trailer park. This plan threatened the tenuous position of Harold's wastrel brother, Clay, the manager of a turkey-processing plant with connections to the trailer park. Clay has nursed a grudge against Harold, who stole away Genevieve, his high-school girlfriend, and later married her. Jesse suspects that Clay is behind Harold's death, a suspicion confirmed when Jesse sees the ghost of his father appearing across a frozen lake. The ghost echoes the advice Old Hamlet gives his son, " ‘I didn't shoot myself . . . You have to believe me' " and " ‘[D]on't tell your mother.' " From here the plot is set in motion, with Jesse trying to find evidence that will incriminate Clay in the death of Harold. Jesse confides in Christine, a kind of Hispanic Ophelia, and also in his Horatio-like friend Charlie. At one point Jesse even confronts his mother in the attic sauna, a hothouse closet scene. Perhaps the biggest deviation from Shakespeare's play lies in the fact that Jesse lives to tell his story-and even Ophelia survives. A large part of the diversion here involves our anticipation of what Enger will do next to echoHamlet. Agent: Devin McIntyre/Mary Evans

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780316006941
  • Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
  • Publication date: 7/3/2008
  • Pages: 320
  • Sales rank: 848,960
  • Product dimensions: 5.70 (w) x 8.30 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Meet the Author

Lin Enger is the MFA director at Minnesota State University, Moorhead. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he lives in Minnesota with his wife and two children.

Customer Reviews

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Sort by: Showing all of 5 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted August 18, 2008

    Hard to put it down

    Once I got into this book I had a hard time putting it down. In fact I finished it in one day. It was written in a slightly different style than I am used to, but after the first chapter I was hooked. Being a Minnesota native made it all the more endearing to me.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 30, 2008

    Very good :

    I thought this book was very enjoyable, a modern day Hamlet for sure. I highly recommend it!

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    Posted January 31, 2010

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    Posted November 24, 2008

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    Posted October 23, 2008

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