Breathing Out the Ghost

Colin St. Claire lost his son. Kidnapped. There was no resolution for him because there was never a body found. All St. Claire had was a suspect and the ghost of his son. Following his `whale,' St. Claire goes off on a speed fueled mission to find his son and punish the man he thinks did it. Following him is an ex-detective named Heim who can't seem to let St. Claire go just as much as St. Claire can`t let go of his son. Sacrificing his own family and his own career, Heim is determined to save St. Claire even if St. Claire won't save himself. Mixed into this is a woman they both come to know, a woman named Sis Pruitt- paths crossing and connecting by the experience of pure and plain suffering- who too lost her daughter Patty when she was murdered. The subject matter isn't something that can be shaken away or read with a light heart. Curnutt's masterful use of description and language is almost poetic. Yet, instead of beautifying the story and masking the horror of what has happened, it only illuminates the darker context under which every one and everything moves and works. Time and time again I caught myself rereading passages, sometimes just because I like how they sounded and sometimes because I wanted to absorb the words into myself. I wanted to understand what was being said and try to feel every bit of it because it was so plainly written. Underneath the prose is something so harshly true to life that it sinks into you. You realize as you read it, "this is really how we are and think." Only, we don't often delve that deeply into our nature to find out. Breathing Out the Ghost tells us how people cope. Or rather, how unrealistic an expectation it is for us to expect people to move on after tragedy, as well as how people function and react in unique ways. It's about pain and obsession and destruction and failed attempts at redemption. This book exposes how we think and feel about tragedy, both those who experience it and those who witness it as outsiders. I came to see through reading this book that we all are more comfortable assuming that life goes on. Yet, the truth of the matter is that it's not so easy. Time and time again I found myself frustrated with St. Claire. He was selfish to think that his quest was not hurting anyone or that his pain was larger than other people. But isn't it also selfish for people to assume that he should let go and move on? Who was I to judge him? It was all very painful to be a part of, but not in a way that made me want to close the book and avoid picking it back up. This book offers absolutely no resolution. I don't say that to criticize. At the end of the book, no one has found peace. Curnutt doesn't try to create drama so that he can fix it and leave his readers with a warm and fulfilled feeling at the end. The drama is the story itself and reflects the hard truth of reality: sometimes there is no end, there is no peace, there is no happiness or light at the end of the tu

A very beautifully written, enlightening view of how two parents cope with the abduction of their child and the other lives their decisions affect. A very real story that sucks you in to the very end. Well done!

Please read this book. Seriously. Rich in imagery, it is a beautiful meditation on loss, pain, grief, and ultimately, acceptance, when one is confronted with what must be the biggest horror in life: The loss of a child. The main characters in the novel have experienced this loss, and they deal with it in different ways. Stay and try to recover, or run away? Both options are explored, and neither one is easier than the other. Sis Pruitt remains in the town where her daughter was killed many years prior, and she immerses herself in a group of parents who have also lost children. Outwardly strong, people look to her for comfort when a local boy goes missing. Inside, she is still in pieces. Colin St. Clair leaves his family, goes on the road, and becomes a shell of a man as he searches for his lost son. He seeks redemption through attempts to find other missing children, and ends up self destructing in the process. I loved the way their stories eventually intertwined. I loved all of the peripheral characters, and the richness they added to the novel. Curnutt didn't take the easy way out and give the reader closure by solving its mysteries. That is why it will continue to resonate long after the last page is turned.

This was a gritty, visceral, emotional, harsh, book. It deals with harsh realities of grief, drug addiction, sexual deviance, obsession, depression, and a little redemption. It was a novel that made me feel deeply and relate to characters with whom I have nothing in common. It drew me in and then punched me in the gut in the final pages. Bravo, Mr. Curnutt.

This is an unbelievable novel--profound, painful, unflinching, frank, moving, disturbing, wise. It takes on an enormously difficult subject--children, the worst that can happen to children, or the loss of children through death, murder, disappearance--and it offers no easy answers, no painless endings, no trenchant beliefs. Let me correct myself. Faulkner once said that he distrusted ideas, that stories were borne of characters, and I think he's right. And Curnutt is far too capable a writer to submit to ideas for fiction, so actually, this book doesn't take on an enormously difficult subject; rather, it takes on enormously pained and complex characters--one intelligent man whose son has been missing for a year, one wise farmer's wife whose daughter was murdered years ago, a pedophile, a private eye who got emotionally and inextricably bound in the first character's Ahab-like pursuit of his son--it takes these characters, has them stumble together, and it plays itself out. Beautifully. Painfully. Intelligently. Here are the things I like most about this book: It doesn't psycholgize. Isaac Singer, in the introduction to his collection of stories, warns against writers using psychology, and not enough writers have heeded the warnings. (Please no more revalations on an analyst's chair, as if such worthy revalations are even possible there. Please expunge the word "dysfunctional" from our society. Please. I digress.) Curnutt doesn't psychologize. He doesn't try to explain why these people are doing what they're doing, why they are who they are, even the pedophile. He just lets them all do it, and he passes no judgment. It tells the story from multiple points of view. I love a book that does that. I love a book that bounces from character to character and creates a tapestry of so many different yet definitive and interconnected threads. I love its rendering of the Midwest. There's that paragraph in Gatsby wherein Nick says, "That was my Middle West," and then goes on about the old houses and all that. Well, those days are gone. The Middle West is now about farmers who combine in air-conditioned tractors, families who prefer canned vegetables to anything in a garden, etc. That's a generalization, of course, but that duality is the Middle West I grew up in, one in which there is a clash between the modern and, as Curnutt writes, "a time that grew more remote with each passing season." And yet, just as soon as one character leaves a Wal-Mart, another character is out castrating pigs (which I've done) or cutting the tails off of newborn piglets (which I've done). Curnutt captures this dichotomy of the Midwest more accurately than anyone else I've read. He also captures the people well. The wittiest people I have ever known were those farmers back home. They're funny sons of guns, as are the women. Curnutt knows this. The writing. I love the writing. When Curnutt needs to move the plot along, he does so with long sentences (my favorite kind; size