The Sojourn
A two-hour Cal Train ride yesterday made it easy for me wrap up reading a second National Book Award fiction finalist selection, The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak (available in Print and eBook). While not at poetically beautiful as fellow finalist The Buddha in the Attic, this book left me with much to mull over.
A departure from my normal choice of novel settings, The Sojourn is mostly set in central Europe during World War I. At its heart, the story is a coming-of-age tale of a Slovak boy, Jozef Vinich, being raised by his shepherd father in rural Austria-Hungary.
Idolizing his father as young boys do, Jozef follows in his footsteps, becoming a skilled hunter and mountain worker in his teens, until he becomes aware of his father’s faults. In his disillusioned state, he goes off to war for two years with his brother but finds himself trying to survive only with hopes of seeing his father again.
A lot of growing up happens in this slim work, and Krivak’s sentences are packed with details and description that at times I had to read twice:
In the town square, where the farmers set up stalls and sold their produce, there was talk of levica, the lioness, sometimes with awe, sometimes with contempt, as though she were goddess and succubus in one body, and my father would return and give us these reports, and at night, under the spell of his brandy, he began telling us more and more about America and the mountains of Colorado, where there lions too, but they were remote animals and remained in the higher altitudes, away from men.
Let’s just say the author is not afraid to use commas.
Finishing the novel, I was left with a feeling of appreciation from my own father and of the connection so many of us share: our parents are not gods or superheroes but regular people, both faulty and wise, doing the best they know how to to keep us from repeating their mistakes.
This is a series of reviews of the 2011 National Book Award fiction finalists. As a personal goal, I'm attempting to read them all prior to the winner announcement.
Here are my reviews so far:
1. The Buddha in the Attic
2. The Sojourn
3. The Tiger's Wife
4. Binocular Vision
5. Salvage the Bones