Disappearances: A Novel
by Howard Frank Mosher
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Book Summary Information
Author: Howard Frank MosherEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-03-29
ISBN: 0618694064
Number of pages: 255
Publisher: Mariner Books
Book Reviews of Disappearances: A Novel
Book Review: Plot mysteriously disappears...News at 11
Summary: 3 Stars
I give this three stars because the writing is beautiful. I stop there because the plot and structure left me stumped about half way into it, and I found myself mumbling to myself "this is one of the dumbest books I've read in ages" nearly everytime I picked it up after that. But in the end, the beautiful writing all adds up to "sound and fury signifying nothing." I finished it for two reasons: 1.) I'm stubborn and 2.) I kept hoping that its early promise suggested overall redemption in the final analysis. The first count, stubborness, is its own reward, but I wound up disappointed on the second. I started out loving it and ended up feeling ripped off.
I'm curious because of the praise heaped on it. To say that this is an adventure story "about" Vermont is like saying that The Odyssey is an adventure story "about" Greece. True enough I suppose, as far as it goes, but that doesn't really capture it now does it? The parallels between these narratives ends there. The action strays too far from the possible for it to be anything but fantasy, but as fantasy, it fails as allegory because it doesn't seem to say anything, well, allegorical. So it's ultimately just a "tall tale" with no redemptive reason for being. Which is okay; it was just not satisfying to me and I kept hoping for more.
As near as I can tell, it's a bildungsroman (a fifty-cent critics' term for "coming of age novel") set around an adventure in 1932, yes, in Vermont. But a bildungsroman, self indulgent though the genre by definition is, usually at least leaves the reader satisfied that there have been some redemptive virtues (or flaws, but changes at any rate) generated over the course of the character's development simply by reason of the events in the story. There is an actual character arc, or evolution at least: The protagonist is one person at the start, and a different person at the end, all because of what he endures throughout the story. As a reader, the genre is satisfying because, even though it's not "my story," it is "the writer's story"; while his journey may not be be mine, I am in on the process and can follow the evolution and perhaps share in processing the transformative events, even if I might have been transformed in entirely different ways. I don't get that here, because I don't know what we are left with at the end of that journey. I have no vision of who this boy is at the start or what he has become as a result of the events we share. So I'm left with a gnawing "so what?" The narrative never really answers any of the questions that it poses. But then, since if never really poses its own internal mysteries in any real articulate way anyhow, I suppose it's no sin to fail to answer them.
For instance, to take the most basic question, why DOES everyone in this lineage (and a few other random one-offs) disappear? (The one notable exception being the Carcajou character, who--like the Cheshire Cat--NEVER seems to disappear despite being the victim of an endless continuum of violent mishaps and deathy defying mutilations.) What does that mean to the narrator? Other than blankness where there used to be a person, what do these disappearances mean? Why should the reader care? Obscuring both the questions and the answers in literary pyrotechnics and fantasy--no matter how beautifully written--doesn't hide this basic flaw, nor make me feel better for having spent my time trying to figure it out. I don't have any idea what these disappearances mean to the author, except that they happen. Oh. Welcome to life I want to say. People come and go from our lives, and either we're better off for having "loved and lost" as Tennyson wrote, or we're not. But to blandly observe that "people disappear" without processing it through some filter of personal meaning is to make the experience something like that of a dog it seems to me. One minute they're on this side of the door, the next, they're on the other.
As for the humor, most of it seems to fall into the category of the literary equivalent of pratfalls. Literary sight gags rather than irony, satire or clever wordsmithing. Again, not enough to rescue the plot from its apparent lack of reason for being.
So when all is said and done, I'm left with the simple question of why this book was written. It's a testament to the author's skill that he manages to keep it going for as long as he does, but only in the same way that it's impressive that a juggler can keep doing what he does for as long as he does it; persistence can be impressive for its own sake, but in the end it isn't much of a payoff to say "I don't know what he was doing or why he did it, but he sure did it for a long time." Stunt writing, as this certainly seems to be, generally won't salvage a flawed narrative and experienced readers won't let the author off easy on this count.
In short, I don't know what the author was exploring or if, when he was done, he found satisfaction in the process. I know I didn't. That said, it may make a great Hollywood film--ironically BECAUSE of its flaws, rather than in spite of them, plot coherence and story line being generally subordinate to opportunities for cinematic excess and cheap laughs in the Hollywood business model of film making.
Summary of Disappearances: A Novel
Winner of the New England Book Award, Howard Frank Mosher's endearing first novel is both a heroic adventure and a thrilling coming-of-age story. It is the memorable tale of a young man named Wild Bill Bonhomme, his larger-than-life father, Quebec Bill, and their whiskey-smuggling exploits along the Vermont-Canada border in 1932. On an epic journey through the wilderness, Bill and his father encounter a cast of wild characters-and live out magical escapades as they carve their way into legend.
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