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A review by slichto3
The Brothers K by David James Duncan
5.0
Wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful. It's just so warm and lovely and funny and smart and relatable. I really loved this book - I just wish it hadn't ended. This is one of the few books where I wasn't at all aware of the page number I was on. I just enjoyed the experience of reading it.
The Brothers K is about the Chance family. The father is an ex-baseball player. He had a shot at the majors, faced, but seemed to overcome, a lot of adversity, then had it all go to hell when he ruined his pitching thumb in a mill accident. His wife, Laura, is an Adventist religious fanatic. Together, they have four sons and two daughters. The story is mostly told through the eyes of Kincaid, the fourth son of the family. He goes through the extensive travails of the Chance kids and parents as they live before, during, and after the Vietnam era. There is so much sadness in their lives that comes from being young, making mistakes, and going through the bad luck in life. But there's also this pervading warm joy that comes from having a family filled with love. Real love, where relationships are sometimes frayed but never completely unjoined.
It's all just so evocative. The writing is beautiful but not dull. It grabs your attention with wit and heart. The characters are so deep and relatable. They come across as the realest of people - they are amazing but also amazingly flawed. The one downside for me, personally, is that it made me feel what more and more books make me feel: that I haven't really lived life. The characters in The Brothers K just live these full and realized lives, while I feel like my own life is one long bore brought about by my own cowardice. But I'll stop there before I make anyone reading this more uncomfortable.
A lovely book that I would recommend to absolutely everyone. It may have overtaken Infinite Jest as my new favorite book. Read it and talk about it with me!
The Brothers K is about the Chance family. The father is an ex-baseball player. He had a shot at the majors, faced, but seemed to overcome, a lot of adversity, then had it all go to hell when he ruined his pitching thumb in a mill accident. His wife, Laura, is an Adventist religious fanatic. Together, they have four sons and two daughters. The story is mostly told through the eyes of Kincaid, the fourth son of the family. He goes through the extensive travails of the Chance kids and parents as they live before, during, and after the Vietnam era. There is so much sadness in their lives that comes from being young, making mistakes, and going through the bad luck in life. But there's also this pervading warm joy that comes from having a family filled with love. Real love, where relationships are sometimes frayed but never completely unjoined.
It's all just so evocative. The writing is beautiful but not dull. It grabs your attention with wit and heart. The characters are so deep and relatable. They come across as the realest of people - they are amazing but also amazingly flawed. The one downside for me, personally, is that it made me feel what more and more books make me feel: that I haven't really lived life. The characters in The Brothers K just live these full and realized lives, while I feel like my own life is one long bore brought about by my own cowardice. But I'll stop there before I make anyone reading this more uncomfortable.
A lovely book that I would recommend to absolutely everyone. It may have overtaken Infinite Jest as my new favorite book. Read it and talk about it with me!