A Prayer for the Dying: A Novel
by Stewart O'Nan
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Book Summary Information
Author: Stewart O'NanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-05-26
ISBN: 031242891X
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: Picador
Book Reviews of A Prayer for the Dying: A Novel
Book Review: Mesmorizing, Horrific, Brilliant
Summary: 5 Stars
I was told by someone that because I love Chuck Palahniuk, that I would enjoy reading Stewart O'Nan. I took her advice and picked up 3 O'Nan novels from my favorite used book store in Towson. I decided to read this one first mostly because it was short and basically a novella.
Upon starting this novel, I could not put it down for a second. From page 1 up through the end of the tale the story is written brilliantly. The horror of what happens in this small town is described in a way that can be identified by anyone reading that has a soul. Love, friendship, heartache, death, and the human condition as a whole are explored and shared with the reader throughout.
I recommend this to any fan of Palahniuk. However, I would recommend this to anyone that enjoys the works of authors that are over published like King, Rice, and Patterson as well. It could be seen as a horror story, but it is much more than that. It is a passionate tale told through the eyes of a force witnessing the life of the hero. It explores the minds and hearts of the characters through his hardship.
I don't want to give anything away in my review. I will not tell you exactly what the story is about. I will tell you this. "A Prayer for the Dying" moved me in a way that most stories do not. I felt compassion and heartbreak. I was moved and disturbed. I identified with something that I hope to never experience.
The novel is brilliant!
Summary of A Prayer for the Dying: A Novel
Set just after the Civil War, A Prayer for the Dying is the story of a small Wisconsin town gripped by a mysterious, deadly epidemic, and one man desperate to save it. Torn between his loyalty to his family, his faith in God, and his terror of this vicious disease, Jacob Hansen struggles to preserve his sanity amid the chaos and violence around him.
When his town's sleepy summer tranquility is shattered by an outbreak of diphtheria, Jacob Hansen--constable, deacon, and undertaker--stares at an impossible dilemma: save both himself and his family or observe his many duties? Although he's nearly convinced that it's possible to do both, the inexorable and crushing horror of Stewart O'Nan's fifth novel, A Prayer for the Dying, is that evil doesn't flinch, that its insistence can obliterate goodness, corrupt humility. "When won't faith save you?" Jacob wonders; the silence soon deafens him.
An ostensibly inured Civil War veteran, Jacob watches helplessly as his neighbors in tiny Friendship, Wisconsin, are stricken with disease: simply hearing a mother say of her daughter, "She's sick," becomes chilling. Yet even as his wife and baby fall ill, Jacob patiently, dutifully tends to the helpless and buries the dead. When panic erupts, however, and he grapples with the tragedies accumulating before him, he feels the prick of spiritual doubt, even succumbs to violence. "Is this the devil's work?" Jacob asks as he struggles to discern the good in a world without order, watches those he serves turn against him, and disregards his own moral outrage.
O'Nan's style is taut and often oddly lovely, its immediacy braced by an unnerving second-person voice. The novel is, at root, spiritually terrifying. It forces us to consider at what remove we truly are from evil. Overwhelmed with checking his own despair, Jacob begins by pondering how to halt wickedness and ineluctably finds himself sustaining its slow creep. You wonder if he ever had a prayer. --Ben Guterson
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