book rec: Bright's Passage
Nov. 23rd, 2012 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraWhen I heard Josh Ritter had written a book, I was intrigued - and a little nervous, because what if it was bad? poor Josh Ritter - but mostly intrigued. I mean, it seemed plausible. Some of the other musicians I like... if Adam Lambert, say, had said he was writing a book, I think my first thought would have been more like "oh honey, really?" He's an amazing singer and seems to be a nice young man and it wouldn't shock me at all if he followed the Justin Timberlake route into movies, but nothing in his lyrics says "could write a book" to me. Josh Ritter, on the other hand, writes clever and poetic lyrics, and a bunch of his songs are basically already short stories, so, longer-form narrative, not such a stretch.
So, Bright's Passage? You don't have to be nervous. You don't even have to be intrigued, as it's not only good-for-being-written-by-someone-famous-for-something-else, it's actually *good*. You might want to read it even if you've never heard of Josh Ritter (and then you can face this whole thing from the other side, being surprised to learn he's a musician too). There is some gorgeous, vivid language here, and some compelling scenes, and an interesting story. I didn't know too much about the plot going in, but, uh, the one-line version would be something like "a recently-returned war veteran takes care of his newborn son in rural West Virginia... but more is going on". (If you know my reading taste, you can guess that there is probably some sort of "more" going on...) Recommended, with the following caveat, that there is some very disturbing subject matter here, such that I hesitate to just recommend it universally. I'm going to put some specific content notes behind a cut, which do spoil some events of the novel, although not the climactic ones:
So, the big thing that makes me uncomfortable recommending it is that in one of the flashbacks, we see Bright's mother murder her sister, who seems to be suffering from some kind of degenerative disease (my mind went to ALS) - this is presented as a "mercy killing", and Bright's mother isn't censured in the text for it, but there's also nothing in the text to suggest that the sister would have wanted that. I'm honestly not sure if it was deliberately ambiguous, in keeping with, uh, *other* ambiguity, or whether it's just another case of the "killing disabled people is good for them" trope rearing its ugly head. There are various other things that might bother some readers - children in peril, animal harm, graphic depictions of war - but nothing else where you're like, wait, is the author *okay* with this? (Ritter is pretty clearly opposed to war, animal harm, and child peril.)
I would love to hear from anyone else who's read it, and will probably say spoilery things in the comments if I do.
So, Bright's Passage? You don't have to be nervous. You don't even have to be intrigued, as it's not only good-for-being-written-by-someone-famous-for-something-else, it's actually *good*. You might want to read it even if you've never heard of Josh Ritter (and then you can face this whole thing from the other side, being surprised to learn he's a musician too). There is some gorgeous, vivid language here, and some compelling scenes, and an interesting story. I didn't know too much about the plot going in, but, uh, the one-line version would be something like "a recently-returned war veteran takes care of his newborn son in rural West Virginia... but more is going on". (If you know my reading taste, you can guess that there is probably some sort of "more" going on...) Recommended, with the following caveat, that there is some very disturbing subject matter here, such that I hesitate to just recommend it universally. I'm going to put some specific content notes behind a cut, which do spoil some events of the novel, although not the climactic ones:
So, the big thing that makes me uncomfortable recommending it is that in one of the flashbacks, we see Bright's mother murder her sister, who seems to be suffering from some kind of degenerative disease (my mind went to ALS) - this is presented as a "mercy killing", and Bright's mother isn't censured in the text for it, but there's also nothing in the text to suggest that the sister would have wanted that. I'm honestly not sure if it was deliberately ambiguous, in keeping with, uh, *other* ambiguity, or whether it's just another case of the "killing disabled people is good for them" trope rearing its ugly head. There are various other things that might bother some readers - children in peril, animal harm, graphic depictions of war - but nothing else where you're like, wait, is the author *okay* with this? (Ritter is pretty clearly opposed to war, animal harm, and child peril.)
I would love to hear from anyone else who's read it, and will probably say spoilery things in the comments if I do.
