Tag: fiction

About the Book

Robert Quinlan and his wife Darla teach at Florida State University. Their marriage, forged in the fervor of anti-Vietnam-war protests, now bears the fractures of time, with the couple trapped in an existence of morning coffee, solitary jogging and separate offices.

For Robert and Darla, the cracks remain below the surface, whereas the divisions in Robert’s own family are more apparent: he has almost no relationship with his brother Jimmy, who became estranged from the family as the Vietnam War intensified.

William Quinlan, Robert and Jimmy’s father, a veteran of World War II, is coming to the end of his life, and aftershocks of war ripple across all their lives once again when Jimmy refuses to appear at his father’s bedside.

And a disturbed homeless man whom Robert at first takes to be a fellow Vietnam veteran turns out to have a devastating impact not just on Robert, but on his entire family.

Format: Paperback (256 pages) Publisher: No Exit Press
Publication date: 27th October 2016 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

Perfume River is one of the books by Robert Olen Butler I’ve chosen to be part of my Backlist Burrow reading challenge in which I’m setting out to read two books from the backlists of six authors whose books I’ve enjoyed. The other book by Robert Olen Butler I plan to read is A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain.

The Vietnam War provides the backdrop to Perfume River and it has cast a shadow over the lives of all the book’s characters.

Robert signed up to serve in Vietnam, believing this was what his father, a veteran of World War II, wanted. The refusal of Robert’s brother, Jimmy, to do the same has caused a rift that has never been healed.

Although assigned a non-operational role in Vietnam, Robert’s part in an incident which brought him unexpectedly face-to-face with the human cost of war has haunted him. It’s a memory he’s tried to suppress but which periodically rises unbidden to the surface. ‘But he still thinks: I was not meant to be here. I was not meant to live this life I’ve led. I was meant to die long ago. Long long ago.’ It’s a secret he’s felt unable to share with anyone, including his wife, Darla, especially since she was violently opposed to the Vietnam War – and believed he was too. Unbeknownst to him, he has misinterpreted her feelings about his involvement.

The author deftly sketches a portrait of a marriage which has staled but not decayed beyond repair. Robert and Darla lead largely separate lives, each engrossed in their own area of academic interest, working in their separate studies on different floors of their house. Yet perhaps the emotional distance is not so great than it cannot be bridged.

Perfume River is a story of misunderstandings and of seeking to live up to the expectations of others – or rather what you believe are the expectations of others. There are no chapter breaks and the book moves seamlessly between different points of view, but I was drawn into the lives of the characters and the consequences of the choices they’ve made.

In three words: Perceptive, acutely-observed, eloquent
Try something similar: The Slowworm’s Song by Andew Miller

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About the Author

Robert Olen Butler is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and sixteen other novels including Hell, A Small Hotel, Perfume River, and the Christopher Marlowe Cobb series. He is also the author of six short story collections and a book on the creative process, From Where You Dream. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and received the 2013 F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.

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About the Book

An ex-soldier and recovering alcoholic living quietly in Somerset, Stephen Rose has just begun to form a bond with Maggie, the daughter he barely knows, when he receives a summons – to an inquiry in Belfast about an incident during the Troubles, which he hoped he had long outdistanced. Now, to testify about it could wreck his fragile relationship with Maggie. And if he loses her, he loses everything.

He decides instead to write her an account of his life – a confession, a defence, a love letter. Also a means of buying time. But as time runs out, the day comes when he must face again what happened in that distant summer of 1982.

Format: Paperback (288 pages) Publisher: Sceptre
Publication date: 19th January 2023 [2022] Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

The Slowworm’s Song is one of the books by Andrew Miller I chose to be part of my Backlist Burrow reading challenge; the other is Pure which I hope to read soon.

Moving between past and present, Stephen recalls events in his life. Some are joyful, such as his first meeting with Evie, the woman who became his wife. ‘We didn’t speak – I’m sure we didn’t speak at all that night – but we had noticed each other and that was enough. You wake to somebody. You feel them wake to you. The first moment is so small.’ Other events are not joyful, or small.

It takes some time before we learn the details of the pivotal event that took place during his time as a young soldier in Northern Ireland. It’s as if he is putting off the moment at which he has to set it down because then it will be out there and cannot be taken back. When it’s revealed, it is shocking in nature and its consequences for the people involved. The incident is something he has kept to himself for over twenty years, unwilling to have anyone else share the burden of knowing about it. ‘I would attend to it in the dark, my secret illness.’ However, the fact that a momentary lapse for which he cannot forgive himself has weighed on Stephen’s mind for so long meant he retained my sympathy.

The author effortlessly takes us inside the mind of Stephen. He’s torn between his desire to reveal the truth in his own way, conscious of the inevitability that it will come out at the inquiry, and his fear that Maggie, when she learns about his role in the incident, will decide to sever all contact with him, just when they have begun to build a relationship. ‘Maggie, I know I’m labouring this but I want you to know I was once someone others could speak well of. That I could do things without making a mess of them…’

The Slowworm’s Song is a quietly powerful book about secrets, guilt, the courage to face up to your past and the gift of forgiveness.

In three words: Moving, insightful, compelling
Try something similar: Perfume River by Robert Olen Butler

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About the Author

Andrew Miller‘s first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997 and greeted as the debut of an outstanding new writer. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. He has since written Casanova, Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, The Optimists, One Morning Like a Bird, Pure, winner of the Costa Book of the Year, The Crossing and Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, which won the Highland Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize. Andrew Miller’s novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he now lives in Somerset.