Review: Leif Enger's "So Brave, Young, and Handsome"
Read this book. It’s good. Real good. Read it if you’re a pastor, or if you like adventure stories, or broken characters seeking redemption, or hard cowboy fun, or just really well-written prose. Leif Enger’s (author of Peace Like a River) has some mad skills.
The book came highly recommended to me by a friend whose taste I trust, so I didn’t read the book jacket description (the best way to read books, by the way). Set in America in 1915, the main character and story-teller is Monte Becket, a one-hit-wonder adventure novel writer who quit his job in the post office but fails to do much right. Becket sort of reminded me of Frank Bascombe in Richard Ford’s novels (recommended too, but much more difficult reads). Both are appealing due to their failures, honestly, and innate American optimism.
Well, a resident of Northfield, Minnesota (which I was proud to call home for four years), meets a reclusive neighbor from down the river. The neighbor is kind, full of the most amazing stories, and has a rather dubious history. To the two set off for a six-week trip to Mexico, a journey of mutual benefit. Glendon, the neighbor, must appease his conscience and confess his faults to a previous wife from his Mexican outlaw days. Becket needs to find himself and discover his true calling whether as a writer, a postman, a husband, a father, or a just a failure.
Adventures ensue. Tears and laughter are shared. Hope is kindled and lost.
I won’t ruin the story, but I will say it contains my new favorite baptism scene in modern fiction. It’s beautiful, hilarious, and so complex it could be used in ten sermons, twenty different ways.
[Ok, here's just a bite if your curious...
"A new fear entered me, ‘Glendon, what if it's wrong for me to do it? Suppose I imperil something'"
‘Imperil what?'
‘My immortal soul,' I rather hissed.
‘Why Becked,' he said, with a warm familiarity I found irksome.
‘I'm serious. What if He's got some rule about this? What if God hates impostors?'
He looked bemused, ‘If you're afriad, then I think you're no impostor.'" ]
I’ll be reviewing some churchy non-fiction books next week, but if your taste is anything like mine, you’ll more enjoy the truthful fiction of Enger’s So Brave, Young, and Handsome.
Just for fun, and for some linking love, here’s some other random blog reviews of the novel: Crookedshore, Erik Emery Hanberg, and BitterSweetLife.
Connect Online
Hey Adam, enjoyed the review of a fine book. And thanks for the link. As an Irishman I find myself drawn to these types of optimistic American novels, the kind of works that we have great difficulty in producing in Ireland – I read Anne Enright’s ‘The Gathering’ after ‘So Young’ and the contrast couldn’t be greater. A friend reckons it’s because the US has no history of being oppressed, Perhaps this is what creates the American novel…or maybe not.
If you haven’t read Enger’s ‘Peace Like a River’, leave the theology books aside for a day or two and do yourself a favour.
And yes becket is a much more winsome version of Frank Bascombe.
Thanks for the word. There is something very optimistic about the “American novel,” but I will quickly say that, sadly, we have far too much of a history of being oppressed–slavery, native americans, women, illegal immigrants today. That oppression is very much part of our story as well, even if it doesn’t show up too clearly in WASP versions of the American novel.
I’ll have to check out Enright.
I’m racking my brain, trying to remember the baptism scene you mentioned…and while I remember the flood, and the boat building, I’m forgetting the baptism. Maybe I read the book too fast?
I agree with CrookedShore, if you haven’t read Peace Like a River, do so this week. It outshines Enger’s sophomore effort by a long shot IMHO. Thanks for the link!
Hmm… we’ll have to talk, Adam. I totally didn’t get this book. I may pick it up again because of your appreciation for it. I stopped somewhere about 2/3 of the way through, after someone (not to spoil the book) gets shot dead in the street by that rogue “ranger” guy. Or maybe he wasn’t shot dead? It was hard for me to care.
By contrast, I was awestruck by Peace Like a River. Maybe that is part of the reason I was so disappointed in the second novel.