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Finn: A Novel (Paperback)

by Jon Clinch (Author)

5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product Details

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (Mar 11 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0812977149
ISBN-13: 978-0812977141
Product Dimensions: 20 x 13 x 1.8 cm
Shipping Weight: 241 g

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #106,115 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this darkly luminous debut, Finn, the namesake of the title, is not Twain's illustrious Huck, but Huck's father, "Pap." As the novel opens, an African-American woman's bloated corpse floats downriver from Lasseter, Ill., toward the slave territory of St. Petersburg, Mo. In the Lasseter woods, Finn—a dangerous, bigoted drunk—tells his blind bootlegger friend, Bliss, that he's finally "quit" his on-again, off-again African-American companion Mary, the mother of Finn's second son (also, confusingly, named Huck). Chronically short on money, Finn is shunned by his father (Adams County Judge James Manchester Finn) and by his brother, Will. Finn does odd jobs, traps catfish and claims tutelary rights to Huckleberry's share of Injun Joe's gold. (In this last, he is thwarted by Widow Douglas and Judge Thatcher, high-handed and stifling as ever.) The opaque in medias res narrative then backs up to detail Finn and Mary's life together: his drinking, his stint in the penitentiary following an assault (sentenced by his own father), Mary's rising debts and Finn's attempts at restitution. As the nature of the woman's murder becomes clear, Clinch lyrically renders the Mississippi River's ceaseless flow, while revealing Finn's brutal contradictions, his violence, arrogance and self-reproach. If Clinch's debut falls short of Twain's achievement, it does further Twain's fiction. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—Embarking from a scene in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Clinch has written a debut novel of harrowing intensity. When Jim and Huck find a dead man in a house floating down the Mississippi, the room with the body is filled with mysterious oddities: a wooden leg, two black masks, crude scrawlings over the walls, etc. Huck does not know that the corpse, shot in the back, is his father. Clinch meticulously fills in the backstory of Finn (or "Pap Finn," as Twain usually referred to him). He uses the details of the floating-house scene, and much of Twain's plotting, characters, and themes, to create a story at once intricately entwined with Huckleberry Finn and separate from that novel in tone and focus. The author makes no attempt to duplicate Twain's humor and satire. Instead, he sets his sights on humanity's immense capacity for evil. While Huck's innate good heart won the battle against his society-produced conscience, allowing him to help the runaway slave, Finn has neither the heart nor conscience to aid anyone. Clinch's book contains many surprises: Huck is a mulatto; the extremely racist Finn fancies black women; Finn's father (Judge Finn) is the wealthiest and most respected citizen in town and yet, in significant ways, more evil than his son. Many fans of Twain's masterpiece will want to read Clinch's inspired interpretation of Pap, but some might find it too gruesome, and too void of hope. In any event, Clinch offers a wealth of material for AP English and college-level papers.—Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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5.0 out of 5 stars The national archives, April 22 2007

By	Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Finn: A Novel (Hardcover)

Mark Twain is the undisputed dominant voice of the 19th Century US. Of all his works, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" stands out as the most significant. So many elements of those times are portrayed that recounting them is impossible. Written from the boy's viewpoint, some aspects of adult life lack full definition. Jon Clinch, in a wonderfully conceived - if disturbing - work, has improved our perception of the people and their times.

Twain's "Pap" Finn enters Huck's story as a grasping, demanding man who views his son only as a means to an end. Clinch takes that image, enhancing and expanding it by providing the background elements underlying Pap's daily life. With a judge father and a mother transplanted from a comfortable life in Philadelphia to the Mississippi frontier, Finn's relations with his family are a maelstrom of tensions. Father-son relations go far beyond the commonly depicted stresses we're used to in today's fiction, however. Race, always a subject sparking high feeling, reaches intense levels in Pap Finn's relations with his father. Among the major factors of those emotions is the revelation that Huckleberry Finn is the son of a black mother. In the pre-Civil War US, a "mulatto" was often viewed with more disdain than a full-blooded African. Particularly when that "half-breed" is your grandson.

Clinch uses the technique of skipping about in time and place as he relates Pap's life. The book's opening is jarring - a corpse is being conveyed down the Mississippi. Common enough in that age; except that this one has been stripped of all its skin - "from scalp to sole". What would prompt somebody to flay a woman's body? The Mississippi Valley was a harsh place, but removing all external evidence of who an individual is seems an extreme step. There must be an underlying reason. Clinch teases that reason out through his portrayal of Huck's Pap and the people in his life. In offering the tidbits of Pap's background, Clinch is exposing the wider world of that time. The book is almost an archival collection of the historical span of US race relations. Not all the views depicted here have been cast away.

This is an exemplary fictional concept, but in developing his character, Clinch must have experienced some disquieting moments. It's easy to state that Pap Finn's capacity for violence would have him in an institution today. Yet, our daily news shows he remains in our midst and but imperfectly restrained. Describing Pap's ambivalent attitude toward Mary, the woman who becomes Huck's mother, and by his relations with others, Clinch demonstrates that we must be careful when deeming a person "evil". Pap may represent an exaggerated version of the pre-Civil War US, but it's not a false one. Clinch's prose style conveys his theme with particular elegance. This is more than a book for Twain fans - he retains many readers in Canada. It adds to the insights Twain provided of the 19th Century frontier in graphic detail. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

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