If Monte Becket nurtured dreams of being the Great American Novelist, those hopes crumbled soon after his first book was published. Now, five years later, it's 1915, and he is about to formalize his defeat by reclaiming his gloomy job at remote Minnesota post office. Before he bites that sour bullet, however, he accepts a vague invitation to travel overland to Mexico with an aging, decrepit outlaw. Becket might be just following the strongest current, but old train robber Glendon Hale is on a feverish mission: He wants to erase mistakes that he made 20 years before. As this unlikely pair travels deeper and deeper into the West, they move further and further from any tranquil certainties.
So Brave, Young, and Handsome is an adventure of the heart and mind as much as of the body. This second novel from Enger will not move you as deeply as Peace Like a River did, but it is far more than just a hectically plotted cowboy adventure story. A famous literary editor once said, "Never be sincere. Sincerity is the death of writing." But Enger proves him wrong. His new novel is romantic but not silly. It belongs to a golden time at the edge of our collective memory of what life—and stories—were like when the West was young and a tale was something to read aloud at night under the lamplight. The world Enger writes about here is a vanished one, but Enger has brought it back to life by the force of his belief.
Enger's second novel is a marvelous tale of an unsuccessful writer and an elderly train robber on a cross-country journey to confront past demons. Dan Woren's narration is steadfast and resolute throughout, offering two unique characters each with his own colorful view of the ever-encroaching modern world. While there is little in the way of varying dialects and tones at work, Woren offers believable and realistic protagonists that immediately capture the listener's imagination and holds it until the end. Simultaneous release with the Atlantic Monthly Press hardcover (Reviews, Jan. 28). (May)
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[Leif Enger is] a formidably gifted writer, one whose fictions are steeped in the American grain. . . . [He] is-like Ron Hansen-a child-friendly, contemporary American heartland novelist, a writer unafraid to concoct and couch his stories in such terms as faith, miracle, sin and grace, repentance and redemption, atonement and absolution. . . . Enger is a masterful storyteller . . . possessed of a seemingly effortless facility for the stiletto-sharp drawing of wholly believable characters [and] a pitch-perfect ear for the cadences and syntax of Midwest and Great Plains vernacular. His Amishly carpentered prose smacks of plow work, prairie, flapjacks and cider, butter churns, denim and calico. . . . At times reminiscent of the sinew and gristle in the craggier work of Annie Proulx, and at other times aspiring to a Jean Shepherdesque folk poetry . . . So Brave, Young, and Handsome is affable and human as all get out, homespun and sophisticated at once, wise and knowing about the ubiquity of the human condition and the vagaries of the human heart.
A superbly written, utterly compelling story of self-discovery and redemption disguised as a cracking good adventure tale . . . Enger has created a work of great humanity and huge heart, a riveting piece of fiction that while highly accessible is never shallow. This story of an ordinary man's discovery of who he is and his place in the world is exciting, admirable and ultimately very affecting. . ..After reading the final page, don't be surprised if you find yourself shaking your head and murmuring, "Wow. What a good book.
So Brave, Young, and Handsome is an almost perfect novel, lively and engrossing, full of surprises, funny, touching, and a great read. . . .
Enger's (Peace Like a River ) sophomore effort is at once engaging and curiously flat, somewhat like its Midwestern setting. In 1915 Minnesota, Monte Beckett, a writer trying to follow up a runaway best seller (like Enger himself), leaves his incomplete novels, his wife, and his son to go on a quest. Glendon Hale, a boat builder with a checkered past, takes Monte with him on his journey to apologize to the wife he abandoned 20 years previously. Their trip takes many unexpected detours while they try to avoid the ex-detective who has pursued Glendon for several decades. What awaits them at the end of their journey surprises both men. This is a particularly American tale, with many elements from both penny Westerns and Mark Twain; the plot is improbable, but the writing is absorbing. Libraries where Enger's first novel was popular will want this book as well. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/08.]
A belated follow-up to a popular debut finds the Midwestern novelist in fine storytelling form, as he spins a picaresque tale of redemption and renewal amid the fading glories of the Old West. Some readers will undoubtedly find autobiographical implications in the protagonist conjured by Enger (Peace Like a River, 2001). In his second novel, a Minnesota writer who has enjoyed his own out-of-the-blue success with a popular novel struggles in vain to produce a suitable successor. In the opening pages of this first-person narrative, Monte Becket introduces himself as a nothing-special Everyman, a former postman who quit his job after his novel Martin Bligh reached a readership beyond the wildest expectations of both the part-time author and his publisher. Yet Becket has since suffered a crisis of confidence, starting and abandoning seven different manuscripts over a four-year period until he fears that his success was just a fluke. This story has its start in 1915, just as Becket abandons his final manuscript, when a mysterious geezer in a rowboat passes his Minnesota riverfront home (with a nod toward Enger's earlier novel, rivers run through this one) and ultimately entices Becket to join him on an adventure that will change both of their lives. The mysterious man's name may or may not be Glendon Hale; he may or may not be an outlaw on the run; and he most certainly is a boat-building alcoholic. With the encouragement of his painter wife, Becket leaves behind a comfortable home and a loving family to accompany Hale on a pilgrimage, one that will find Becket learning more about his companion's identity while assuming an alias of his own. As they head south toward Mexico and then west toCalifornia, they find their travels enlivened by a young accomplice who joins them and a pursuer who trails them, a former Pinkerton detective who has also enjoyed some literary success. Revelations abound, for both Becket and the reader. Though Becket laments that he "can't write a(nother) book that anyone will want to read," Enger has. Agent: Paul Cirone/The Friedrich Agency
Dan Woren's voice for Minnesota writer (and story narrator) Monte Becker is straightforward, flat, and a little bored. This approach is a perfect fit as Becker is looking for adventure after the unexpected success of his first novel and the string of writing failures that followed. Becker thinks he's found it in the strange personage of Glendon Hale. But he has no idea what’s to follow, nor do listeners, as Becker accompanies the enigmatic Hale into wild adventures of the fading Old West of 1915. The story has a large cast of characters, and Woren personalizes each, giving particular strength to Charles Siringo, an ex-Pinkerton villain. Siringo's rough and ugly voice makes him a great auditory counterpoint to Becker, who becomes his unwilling travel mate. S.W. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
NOVEMBER 2008 - AudioFile
