Reservation Road (Vintage Contemporaries)
by John Burnham Schwartz
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Book Summary Information
Author: John Burnham SchwartzEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-09-25
ISBN: 0307388328
Number of pages: 367
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Reservation Road (Vintage Contemporaries)
Book Review: "It required a state of suspended disbelief. Otherwise you might go insane..."
Summary: 5 Stars
It really takes a lot for a book to really grip me these days, especially since I have the awful habit of starting a lot of books and never finishing. Nine out of ten times it's no fault of the writer, mind you. I end up seeing something else at the bookstore and want to start that as opposed to finishing the current book I'm reading. I found no such problem with "Reservation Road" by John Burnham Schwartz, as the book completely hooked me in from the first page. It's a heartbreaking and surprisingly tense work of art that gives you honest-to-god real characters who despite all of their flaws and shortcomings, you care for each and every one of them.
Sometimes it only takes that one random event that can cause everything to fall apart. This happens on such a night when a boy is killed by a hit-and-run. Ethan is the boy's father and cannot even begin to comprehend what has happened. He is further torn apart when he sees that the justice system that he thought he could rely on cannot even bring him the closure he wants. Grace is his wife, and after the accident she is completely disconnected from everyone and everything, not caring about her appearance or her daily activities and duties as a mother to their remaining child. Dwight Arno is the man responsible for accidentally running over the boy, and even though he knows that he should've stopped and turned himself in, he keeps on driving fearing any interruption that'll keep him away from trying to make up on being a good father to his son. Still, that doesn't take away the guilt and the pain he feels for what he has done and he knows there's no going back to normal, no matter how hard he tries to pretend.
The story is masterfully told using three POV's and switches between them. From Ethan's and Dwight's POV, the story is told in first person and from their account and feelings. The POV of Grace is told using third person, which I think is an excellent decision being that Grace, as you'll read, seems to be the more disconnected and distant from everything. Using three first person narratives would've thrown the novel over-the-top and have it become vulnerable to being melodramatic. Because we are given true insights to these characters, we cannot help but feel and care for them. And this is why it is so easy for the reader to get absorbed and lost into the world that Scwartz has painted for us. It's not a pretty or uplifting picture, yet we still read on. There is a lot of tension and suspense, but not from action. It is because we are given the privilege to know and feel what these people are thinking and we have no idea what they are capable of doing. The tension is subtle, but it definitely makes one's heart pound a little faster at times.
Without giving anything away, I do understand why some people might be upset with how the book ends. My advice is that after you read it, you allow the ending soak into you a little. Even re-read it a few times, for if you do you will realize that this is the most appropriate ending. To end it any other way would have been gimmicky or a cheat. Even though some of the critics try to call this a sort of "thriller," it is really anything but that. There were at least five different ways I thought it was going to end, and I am happy that it wasn't any of them. The more I re-read the last few pages, the more I see the brilliance of it all.
"Reservation Road" is a fantastic and epic novel about how we deal with life's tragedies, and how it can bring the best and worst out of us. I feel sorry for the next book that I read by any author immediately after reading this, because it's going to take a lot to grab me the way that this novel did. Stunningly character-driven, heart-breaking and even insightful, "Reservation Road" delivers a painful and dark journey that we know once we start, there is no turning back. -Michael Crane
Summary of Reservation Road (Vintage Contemporaries)
A cycle of violence and retribution is set in motion as two haunted men are engulfed by the emotions surrounding an unexpected and horrendous death.Ethan, a respected professor at a small New England college, is wracked by an obsession for revenge that threatens to tear his family apart. Dwight, fleeing his crime yet hoping to get caught, wrestles with overwhelming guilt and his sense of obligation to his son. As these two men's lives unravel, Reservation Road moves to its startling conclusion.
"Explain this to me: One minute there is a boy, a life thrumming with possibilities, and the next there are marked cars and strangers in uniform and the fractured whirling lights. And that, suddenly, is all the world has to offer." This is the voice of Ethan Learner, a college professor who has just watched his 10-year-old son, Josh, die in a hit-and-run accident on a silent Connecticut road.
John Burnham Schwartz's Bicycle Days (1989) received favorable reviews but seemed very much an autobiographical first novel. His second fiction, Reservation Road, however, is a book that resists genres: a tragedy where all the characters are flawed and none are entirely guilty; a thriller where the killer, Dwight, wants to be caught but is too laden with self-loathing to turn himself in; and an experimental novel where the narrative jumps gracefully among three perspectives.
In the opening pages Schwartz establishes strong connections between fathers and sons. Moments before the accident Ethan watches his son standing precariously close to the curb; he sees possibilities in Josh, a shy boy whose musical gifts indicate a sensitivity that is no less present, though more mature, in his father. At the same time, Dwight and his son, Sam (also 10), are rushing home from an extra-innings Red Sox game where Dwight tries to rebuild the fragments of attachment left after a bitter divorce. Schwartz reveals depth in simple gestures--a hand, for example, placed in a hand, only to be self-consciously pulled away. Dwight drives on after hitting Josh, though he slows in a moment of hesitation in which Ethan hears him calling "Sam" or "Sham"--he's not sure which. Out of grief, and with only scattered clues, Ethan begins his quiet pursuit of the killer, a pursuit that fuels the novel to its poetic conclusion. In Reservation Road, John Burnham Schwartz has crafted a lasting work of literature, a page-turner that's also a rich character study. --Patrick O'Kelley
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