Gob's Grief

this is one of the most imaginative and beautifully written books I have ever read. The opening chapters dealing with the death of Tomo are some of the most heartbreaking and disturbing words ever written about War. The tale of Gob, Macie, Dr. Fie, Pickie, and Walt Whitman is very engrossing. The obsession with conquering death permeates every chapter. The feelings of grief and despair are palpable.The ending, while it may leave some disappointed, was handled very well. With a tale of this scope and subject I was very leary of how the ending would be done, but I was not disappointed. I eagerly await the next effort by Mr. Adrian!

This novel amazed me for the way it tells of the myriad affections there are between people, most of them unable to be sanctified by marriage, and many of them familiar from experience, and not for having been described in prose. The novel does so in a landscape that reminded me of Jules Verne, or of Shakespeare's The Tempest, and Adrian is in a way a sort of Ariel, the shapeshifting magician's attendant spirit, than like any other writer he is compared to (for I do think him unique)--- taking on shapes we know (Whitman, Woodhull) and that, in taking them on, he owns and then reintroduces to us. Reading of his Whitman you feel that it is Whitman better than a biography might display, and yet you know, another spirit is present, also---the counterfeit of good magic. All of this is done to tell his story, of men who have all lost brothers, of the flesh or spirit or both, and have set themselves against Heaven, God, and the angels to get them back. In the way that it is the story of the glorious machine these men build, it is like Verne, actually, but in the manner of a brother, perhaps, borne of a different father. Don't mistake this for some dreary historical fiction that seeks impossibly to be an historically accurate tale of the past returned complete---to truly write such a thing (and many critics would have us believe we need to try to do so), a writer would need the machine these men are trying to build. It's better than that, though, the novel slips off the realism that has afflicted the intentions of so many too-earnest American writers, and tells us something real about how people feel, and what that can make them do, and build. In a way one has the sense that for the writer, the novel is very like the impossible machine Gob and Will build: composed of other people's bones and the representations of their deaths, filled with the brightest light, magnificent for what it cannot do and for what it does, both.

This is the work of a brilliant, mature writer -- I was completely overwhelmed by this book and continue to be amazed that it is Dr. Adrian's first. Not since Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping have I been so impressed by a first novel. In a work anchored in a profound understanding of the call of grief on our lives, I found this novel's most endearing quality to be its humor. This is the humor of Crime and Punishment or the second half of Moby Dick: the sly, insightful burrowing into the heart of what it is to be a possessor of free will in a universe that seems sometimes not to recognize the agency. I'm eagerly awaiting the next work of this promising new author.

Painstakingly realized and exquisitely sad, Gob's Grief feels like it has been not merely written, but EARNED. There is great emotional and intellectual depth here, and the author resolutely avoids the mawkish or pretentious. The sadness (national and personal) depicted in these pages is expertly portrayed, and the touches of humorous, utterly believable humanity keep us alert, involved, and hungrily turning pages. Ladies and gentlemen, please take note and remember how it's done: real sentiment without sentimentality. Real, palpable emotion, in a fictional world that makes room for ghosts, angels, and -- perhaps the most "fantastic" fictional element of all -- the human heart.

The nod to Best Book of the Year has certainly peaked early with the release of Chris Adrian's "Gob's Grief". Far too few contemporary tomes manage to balance the World of Ideas a la Saul Bellow and gripping drama as beautifully as Adrian does. His prose is consistantly poetic, inspired and enchanting, transporting the reader into Civil War-torn America with complete ease. "Gob's Grief" soars, transforms and, ultimately, helps heal the mortal wounds that are part of being all too human. Stunning.