Customer Reviews

Gob's Grief: A Novel

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A boy, Tomo, runs off to battle during the Civil War, leaving his hesitant twin brother Gob behind, and is almost instantly killed. A few years later we meet Gob once again, now a doctor driven by guilt and loss to construct a fantastic machine that will bring Tomo (and all the thousands of Civil War dead) back to life. Others are driven to join Gob's quest--the poet Walt Whitman, who hears the voice of a dead soldier in his head; Dr. Will Fie, literally followed by ghosts through the streets, and beautiful Maci Trufant, who flees her father's madness only to find her own left hand becoming the instrument for her dead brother's frantic communications, scribbled from somewhere beyond the grave.

GOB'S GRIEF is a strikingly emotional and original novel, set in a time when Americans were seemingly drowning in anguish, desperately trying to make sense of a country that had turned on itself. Elements of romance, history, horror, spiritualism and magic realism are ambitiously combined, with mixed results--sometimes the book feels repetitious and overstuffed, and some elements simply never quite manage to fit. However, as a whole, this is a memorable debut novel from a talented writer. I'll be looking for his name again.

this is one of the most imaginative and beautifully written books I have ever read. The opening chapters dealing with the death of Tomo are some of the most heartbreaking and disturbing words ever written about War.

The tale of Gob, Macie, Dr. Fie, Pickie, and Walt Whitman is very engrossing. The obsession with conquering death permeates every chapter. The feelings of grief and despair are palpable.

The ending, while it may leave some disappointed, was handled very well. With a tale of this scope and subject I was very leary of how the ending would be done, but I was not disappointed.

I eagerly await the next effort by Mr. Adrian!

Gob's Grief is beautiful, sensitive, insightful, moving, repetitive, convoluted, a little too "artful," and (as one reviewer said) "wonderous strange." If you like this kind of thing, you'll give this book five stars. If you want a story that makes sense, or has realistic (and sane) characters and a reasonable progression from beginning to end, you'll have a hard time getting through it. I am in the latter group.

As I said in the title to this review, this is a very strange book, indeed. It takes historical figures such as Victoria Woodhull, Walt Whitman and others, and mixes them with fictional characters to create a plot that is extremely difficult to describe. Suffice it to say that one of the characters is intent upon building a "machine" that will bring back all of the dead. It sounds like pure science fiction, but the story is so well told that, even if you're not an SF fan, you won't be put off by reading it. There are large chunks of beautiful writing in this book, and some of the insights into the human condition are amazing for a young author. You just have to get beyond the odd basis of the book, and read and enjoy it for the writing and the character development. It's a worthwhile effort, believe me.

I found this to be a beautiful and sensitive book. I am puzzled by why Mr. McInerney ("Grief Is Right") seems so angry. His review seems to be more about his showing off than it is about this book. He says this started out as a short story --- has it occurred to him that sometimes a writer is already at work on a novel and it's other people's idea to publish an excerpt from it separately? As for another reviewer's comment along the lines of, "Enter Walt Whitman. Why? I have not a clue." The "why?" argument, which seems more like a "so what," doesn't really work in fiction. You could easily take any great work and deflate it that way. Anna Karenina --- So this woman jumps in front of a train, so what? It strikes this reader as a moot question and as weak criticism. Adrian's language is beautiful and his characters' struggles are real. It is unfortunate that some of the reviewers here would rather spout off than give a fair review to a good writer. Maybe they're just frustrated writers.

Repetitive, pretentious, self-consciously "artful"--a hothouse literary exercise, another first novel that makes bad literature out of bad psychology--makes fun of madness and mental illness, while using the subject as a crutch both to get laughs and to give the fiction a false sense of depth. The author may have done his best, but the publisher and editor have no such excuse. They should be ashamed of this.

The Civil War was emotionally traumatic on a national scale; much has been said about the battles themselves. But what about the survivors of the war? How do they piece their lives together again after everything they've taken for granted has been destroyed?

Walt Whitman ministered to the wounded in a Washington hospital. In the short story "Every Night for a Thousand Years," Chris Adrian describes Whitman's experiences: it is a heart-breaking and exquisitely crafted story, which appears as a chapter in this novel.

The novel allows Adrian to flesh out the characters, introduce new ones, and blend fictional with historical events. It's fascinating--and disturbing--to read about post-Civil War New York. Adrian brings the era to life, and he has an original perspective. There is a Gothic intensity to the whole book. And, he has the ability to allow the reader to feel sadness and loss. For those reasons, it's worth reading.

On the other hand, the story/chapter "Every Night..." was much better, alone, than as part of the book. Also, there were so many characters, and some had more substance than others. I found the pace of the book a little jarring. Maybe that was Adrian's intent, to give the reader some sense of what it must have been like in the late 19th Century, letting go of the expectations you've built and having to construct new ones.

I hope Adrian continues to write. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a good solid read, but I would definitely steer a depressed person in another direction.

This started as a short story, and was published as such. That is where it should have stayed. For this book touches on a multitude of topics repeatedly, superficially, and never assembles the various threads into anything. This is a collection of repetitive parts that get worse as they overlap. The book's description/premise required a talented writer the likes of a Richard Powers, "Gold Bug Variations, etc" to succeed, and Mr. Adrian has a lengthy road ahead of him before he has that type of credibility and writing skill. This book is nicely packaged, with a description that is a stretch, and slick artwork on the cover, this is a marketer pushing a product that is premature.

The Author can drone on about death and grief and play at being a third rate Dr. Frankenstein for as long as he likes, however this rambling collection that continually stumbles over the same ground without appearing to have that intent, is just annoying. The, "Unnatural Pickie Beecher's", entrance into this book is laughingly bad. His initial appearance prior to his development is the stuff of wretched late night television. When talk turns to the uniting of the Mortal and Immortal it is no more than pretentious nonsense.

We have a main character that escapes Parents who have gone insane only to marry a husband who is pursuing a version of the same stupidity her Father had and she had destroyed. What appear to be attempts to tie behavior like this together into some overarching whole doesn't work. So the solution to dead end plot lines is to just add more. Enter Walt Whitman, why, I have not a clue. Suffragists, spiritualists, pseudo scientists, combined with a host of others ranging from the boring to the freakishly bizarre Pickie, might drive a reader to grieve over the money that was spent on this idea that might have been a book.

For this book to deliver all that the jacket promised it would have had to contain a single storyline, and probably been twice as long. This young writer may become a real talent in the future, however this book is a classic case of taking a young writer who may have a future, but who's work is forced too soon upon the reading public. Mr. Adrian will have to dig out from this, and that is sad.

This started as a short story, and was published as such. That is where it should have stayed. For this book touches on a multitude of topics repeatedly, superficially, and never assembles the various threads into anything. This is a collection of repetitive parts that get worse as they overlap. The book's description/premise required a talented writer the likes of a Richard Powers, "Gold Bug Variations, etc" to succeed, and Mr. Adrian has a lengthy road ahead of him before he has that type of credibility and writing skill. This book is nicely packaged, with a description that is a stretch, and slick artwork on the cover, this is a marketer pushing a product that is premature.

The Author can drone on about death and grief and play at being a third rate Dr. Frankenstein for as long as he likes, however this rambling collection that continually stumbles over the same ground without appearing to have that intent, is just annoying. The, "Unnatural Pickie Beecher's", entrance into this book is laughingly bad. His initial appearance prior to his development is the stuff of wretched late night television. When talk turns to the uniting of the Mortal and Immortal it is no more than pretentious nonsense.

We have a main character that escapes Parents who have gone insane only to marry a husband who is pursuing a version of the same stupidity her Father had and she had destroyed. What appear to be attempts to tie behavior like this together into some overarching whole doesn't work. So the solution to dead end plot lines is to just add more. Enter Walt Whitman, why, I have not a clue. Suffragists, spiritualists, pseudo scientists, combined with a host of others ranging from the boring to the freakishly bizarre Pickie, might drive a reader to grieve over the money that was spent on this idea that might have been a book.

For this book to deliver all that the jacket promised it would have had to contain a single storyline, and probably been twice as long. This young writer may become a real talent in the future, however this book is a classic case of taking a young writer who may have a future, but who's work is forced too soon upon the reading public. Mr. Adrian will have to dig out from this, and that is sad.

Chris Adrian is a gifted, highly imaginative writer who takes the theme of grief and builds upon it by blending historical fact and actual people with a cast of intriguing, sometimes fascinating, characters. The Civil War details make for compelling reading and the first half of the book carries the reader along at a steady gallop. The second half, which delves into the backgrounds of many of the characters, is far slower in pacing and requires a committed interest on the part of the reader. The feel for time and place is wonderfully effective; the pervasive grief (of all the central characters) is almost overwhelming. But I found it tough going to get through to the end. This is a heavy book, on a heavy theme: the notion that the loss of beloved brothers could drive people to create a machine that would reverse the process and bring all the dead back to life.

Some of the characters in Gob's Grief are extraordinarily compelling creations, particularly the Urfeist, and Pickie Beecher. I recommend this book with the caveat that it is not for the faint of heart or those unwilling to suspend disbelief. Certainly, I'll be very interested to see what Chris Adrian does next. For a first novel, this is an impressive debut.