- Paperback: 328 pages
- Publisher: Cormorant Books (July 5 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1896951643
- ISBN-13: 978-1896951645
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14 x 2.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 399 g
- Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #785,556 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
When his home is burnt down, Alistair Mackenzie, a mild and likeable retired academic, moves in with his daughter Agnes and her family. Alistair fought in the Second World War. Now widowed, frail and deaf, he desperately misses his wife. His sister is in a home suffering from senile dementia and his daughter, while kindly, inhabits a world from which Alistair is feeling increasingly distanced. For a man who loves Dickens and Austen, Agnes's dedication to soap operas has scant meaning, shopping malls even less. Then, struggling round one of the latter one day before Christmas, he finds himself entranced by a display of fine writing paper. He choses a box for his daughter, only to realize later that he has made a mistake. This is a gift relevant to himself, a gift that speaks of the past. The past is a foreign country, he recalls, although he can no longer remember who said this and is not certain he agrees with it. Alistair peels back the layers of memory to make his own journey back to that country. Born in Trinidad, Neil Bissoondath has lived in Canada since 1973. Author of six awardwinning books, one of which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize, this latest hints at discipleship to another Trinidadian. (He dedicates it to V S Naipaul.) This is not, however, in any way to suggest pretension or servility of style. Rather, Bissoondath has produced one of those rare literary novels written straight from the heart. Intensely readable yet profound, it eschews gimmick and artifice to succeed at every level. A deceptively smooth texture and elusive wit are but aspects of a work that, if there is any justice in this world, will be acclaimed as one of the year's best. For, like the writing paper that so delights the author's protagonist, here is fiction of finest quality. (Kirkus UK)
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Book Description
Winner of the 2002 Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction.
"A breathless silence. Night creeping in beyond the trees, sky a dapple of blue on the darkening leaves. Stars appeared. I went to bed. They burned my home. So everything changes."
The beginning of Neil Bissoondath's Doing the Heart Good marks the end of a seventy-year-old man's independent life. Alistair Mackenzie — widower, father, grandfather, retired professor, lover of Dickens and good sherry — is forced to move in with his daughter and her family, bringing with him only a few medals, pyjamas that still bear the smell of smoke, and memory — that territory, alien and untrustworthy, unfailingly inhabited by a familiar stranger.
Seeking to come to terms with a life he has never anticipated, fearful of disappearing after his death, he examines significant episodes from his shattered past, revisiting a lifetime of love and quarrels, friendship and betrayal, war and peace. As he performs that strange and wonderful dance of moving forward while also looking back, the past begins to lend coherence to the confused present and to reveal the thread that connects him to his new future with his daughter, his son-in-law, and his grandson. A sedentary man quietly living out the final years of life, Alistair Mackenzie must learn how to adapt to his place in time — and how not to let the rest of his life pass him by, his family become strangers, his achievements be forgotten.
A novel of memory — of what it means, how it informs, how it can salvage tomorrow from the debris of yesterday — written at the very height of a great artist's power.
"A breathless silence. Night creeping in beyond the trees, sky a dapple of blue on the darkening leaves. Stars appeared. I went to bed. They burned my home. So everything changes."
The beginning of Neil Bissoondath's Doing the Heart Good marks the end of a seventy-year-old man's independent life. Alistair Mackenzie — widower, father, grandfather, retired professor, lover of Dickens and good sherry — is forced to move in with his daughter and her family, bringing with him only a few medals, pyjamas that still bear the smell of smoke, and memory — that territory, alien and untrustworthy, unfailingly inhabited by a familiar stranger.
Seeking to come to terms with a life he has never anticipated, fearful of disappearing after his death, he examines significant episodes from his shattered past, revisiting a lifetime of love and quarrels, friendship and betrayal, war and peace. As he performs that strange and wonderful dance of moving forward while also looking back, the past begins to lend coherence to the confused present and to reveal the thread that connects him to his new future with his daughter, his son-in-law, and his grandson. A sedentary man quietly living out the final years of life, Alistair Mackenzie must learn how to adapt to his place in time — and how not to let the rest of his life pass him by, his family become strangers, his achievements be forgotten.
A novel of memory — of what it means, how it informs, how it can salvage tomorrow from the debris of yesterday — written at the very height of a great artist's power.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Étrange histoire,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: DOING THE HEART GOOD (Paperback)
Je n'ai personnellement pas aimé cette histoire qui donne froid dans le dos, mais je reconnais que ce qui y est décrit de la difficulté d'adaptation des familles d'émigrés, juives de surcroît, est intéressant.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
4.0 out of 5 stars
Another good novel from Neil,
By Robert Phillips - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: DOING THE HEART GOOD (Paperback)
I have all of Neil's novels and this one rates close to being one of his best, with my favourite being 'The Innocence of Age'.A well read and intelligent author, do yourself a favour and add this and his other books to your library. |
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