Nunnormal Normal Normal itibaren Karhal Gaon, Assam, Inde
The best thing about West of Here is that the book itself is a big idea. And it's nicely atmospheric, the majesty of the Pacific Northwest comes across more clearly than any of the thirty-odd characters that populate its pages. But despite the reviews making free use of words like 'sweeping' and 'epic,' to describe it, this book is neither. It is merely long, with much of that length in the vastly overwritten sectional chapters. I would propose that, when your book is weighing in at 486 pages, and you have a vast array of adult human characters busy as ants at advancing the plot - you really needn't include any writing at all from the perspective of a tiny infant, or (yes, really) the Mather party mule. A writer, or editor (is there an editor in the house?!), could also have opted to reduce the references to optimism and switchbacking by half. Or, indeed, noticed any of the other exceedingly repetitive turns of phrase that keep the read hovering on the brink of tediousness at all times. On page 251: "...Timmon felt the cold reality of death lurking somewhere beneath his skin." On page 263: "...Timmon knew, despite the cold reality of death lurking in his bones..." What, are we all out of fresh adjectives and verbs, only just past the half way point of the novel? It is truly a shame that so much space is wasted on things like that, because otherwise the reader does get a sense that West of Here aspires to be a good novel, and if it spent that time on further developing its extant characters and character arcs, it might not fall far short. But the book is what it is. It does not cover a hundred years of the history of fictional Port Bonita - it covers two years: November 1889 - October 1890 and June - September of 2006. It feels longer, granted, but it's not. And as such, not enough time is given to the characters to fully develop. This is partially due to the structure of the narrative, which can beat even the Mather party for the number of switchbacks, but which never weaves itself together as a cohesive whole. It feels like each section is stacked on top of the one that came before, in the manner of awkwardly balanced blocks, as opposed to building or feeding or connecting one to the next. It does not flow, so much as it clunks. There are also instances where far too many pages fall between one appearance of a familiar character and his eventual return. I had to keep reminding myself of who Adam was every time we switched back over to his part of the story. And, in the tradition of novels with a cast of thousands, too many characters have their arcs dropped completely, or the characters themselves exit stage right when there is still more than a quarter of the book left to go. This book could have been so much more readable (and enjoyable!) with a tightened focus on some of the more interesting characters and plots. The autistic Indian boy who is thought to walk in two worlds was terrific, until they tied him in with the acid tripping comics reading modern teen. Jarringly pointless. And wrapping up the whole novel with a post-move letter from Krig feels like Evison just opted to tag a big PS at the end of an already supremely long story. Like the residents of Port Bonita, you have to be an optimist to keep reading this book, in continual hope that it will pick up or get better. Unfortunately, this hope just does not pan out.