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A review by iprobablywontlikeit
The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter by Craig Lancaster
4.0
I reviewed this one right after its publication in 2014, after a long and jaded dry spell reading nothing but nonfiction. I reviewed it on Amazon long before joining Goodreads. A lot of life has happened since then, and I don't know how well that past self would recognize me today. But here it is anyway for posterity.
**********************************
I lost my faith in the power of the novel years ago. I won't say that Craig Lancaster has renewed that faith, but he has -- in keeping with one of the novel's major themes -- given me hope.
I'm usually wary of novels written in the first person because the narrators are often little more than filters for the action and aren't really actors themselves, not on a truly human level, anyway. But here the narrator, Mark Westerly, is a fully realized human being, as are all the characters in this book. So well realized, in fact, that at times it's easy to forget that this is fiction and not a memoir. The dialog Lancaster conjures from these characters strikes that perfect balance: real enough to be believable and fictional enough to be entertaining. And more than that, Lancaster performs the seemingly impossible time and again: his characters utter deep sentimental truths that feel genuine to the ear.
But now a confession. I read this book in a day and a half while spending the night in a hospital with one of my young children. And there's something very special about reading an entire novel in so short a time when there's little else to do but kill time between nurse visits. It makes me wonder if I would have finished this novel under normal circumstances because I could tell the novel was losing its energy in the middle (where most novels lose energy). The characters and dialog weren't losing energy, but the plot was slipping away with the end too far out of sight (hence the four stars instead of five). However, not finishing this book would have been as tragic as any number of the title character's squandered opportunities. Read this novel, but read it quickly, in long stretches, in a waiting room or on a long flight.
One more thing. I don't believe this novel is really about redemption, as so many have said, because even though both Mark and Hugo try repeatedly to redeem their pasts, they never truly succeed. What they experience is not redemption, but grace. And what makes this novel work so well -- what sets it apart -- is that not only does the grace offered to these characters feel genuine, but their acceptances of those acts of grace make you want to cheer.
**********************************
I lost my faith in the power of the novel years ago. I won't say that Craig Lancaster has renewed that faith, but he has -- in keeping with one of the novel's major themes -- given me hope.
I'm usually wary of novels written in the first person because the narrators are often little more than filters for the action and aren't really actors themselves, not on a truly human level, anyway. But here the narrator, Mark Westerly, is a fully realized human being, as are all the characters in this book. So well realized, in fact, that at times it's easy to forget that this is fiction and not a memoir. The dialog Lancaster conjures from these characters strikes that perfect balance: real enough to be believable and fictional enough to be entertaining. And more than that, Lancaster performs the seemingly impossible time and again: his characters utter deep sentimental truths that feel genuine to the ear.
But now a confession. I read this book in a day and a half while spending the night in a hospital with one of my young children. And there's something very special about reading an entire novel in so short a time when there's little else to do but kill time between nurse visits. It makes me wonder if I would have finished this novel under normal circumstances because I could tell the novel was losing its energy in the middle (where most novels lose energy). The characters and dialog weren't losing energy, but the plot was slipping away with the end too far out of sight (hence the four stars instead of five). However, not finishing this book would have been as tragic as any number of the title character's squandered opportunities. Read this novel, but read it quickly, in long stretches, in a waiting room or on a long flight.
One more thing. I don't believe this novel is really about redemption, as so many have said, because even though both Mark and Hugo try repeatedly to redeem their pasts, they never truly succeed. What they experience is not redemption, but grace. And what makes this novel work so well -- what sets it apart -- is that not only does the grace offered to these characters feel genuine, but their acceptances of those acts of grace make you want to cheer.