An American Memory

Chilling in its detail, powerful in its emotional resonance, and unconventional in its narrative, An American Memory may be one of the strongest debuts by an American writer in the last twenty years. Mr. Larsen describes the subtle dysfunction and destruction of a Midwestern family through three generations and in the process forces the reader to examine his own demons. Bouncing from time period to time period and from POV to POV, the novel weaves years of seemingly innocent acts into a quilt of despair and then, ultimate salvation. The terror of memory and the inablility to understand time's progress combine to provide for the protagonists, and the reader, a lonely journey. Larsen has the uncanny ability to underplay a scene so well that not until pages later does one find oneself overwhelmed by its implications. Like the experience of standing on a prarie with the wind blowing around you and not another person in sight, this novel will resonate for many many years in my soul