In his debut novel which springs from Twain's classic story, Jon Clinch delves into the history and heart of one of American literature's most brutal and mysterious figures: Huckleberry Finn's father Pap.
Critic Reviews
|
Outstanding
|
Bookslut Mariya Strauss
Jon Clinch has turned in a nearly perfect first book, a creative response that matches "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" in intensity and tenacious soul-searching about racism.
|
|
Outstanding
|
Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese
In the saga of this tormented human being, Clinch brings us a radical (and endlessly debatable) new take on Twain's classic, and a stand-alone marvel of a novel.
|
|
Outstanding
|
Publishers Weekly
Clinch lyrically renders the Mississippi River's ceaseless flow, while revealing Finn's brutal contradictions, his violence, arrogance and self-reproach. [18 Dec 2006, p.41]
|
|
Outstanding
|
USA Today Bob Minzesheimer
Finn is a triumph of imagination and graceful writing...I'd like to think that the cantankerous Twain would welcome the company.
|
|
Outstanding
|
Washington Post Ron Charles
Clinch reimagines Finn in a strikingly original way, replacing Huck's voice with his own magisterial vision--one that's nothing short of revelatory.
|
|
Favorable
|
The New Yorker
Clinch conjures the world of pre-Civil War America in all the complexity of its contradictions.
|
|
Favorable
|
San Francisco Chronicle Katherine Hill
In spite of this writer's penchant for detail, he has created in the character of Finn a bloody, haunting enigma.
|
|
Favorable
|
Christian Science Monitor Erik Spanberg
Considering the heady literary terrain Clinch hopes to master, the novel succeeds better than anyone other than its author could have expected.
|
|
Mixed
|
The New York Times Book Review Ron Powers
Jon Clinch possesses the imagination and technical skills that will produce wonderful novels. Perhaps he needs to discover his own literary universe, rather than borrow from such as Twain and McCarthy. We been there before.
|
|
Mixed
|
Houston Chronicle William J. Cobb
The novel is certainly well-told...[But] the decision to cast a vision of the world through such an implacable, and distant, bogeyman makes for a sour experience.
|
|
Mixed
|
Los Angeles Times Steve Almond
Dark and often gripping, though marred by stylistic excess and a shortage of pathos.
|
|
Mixed
|
Chicago Tribune Art Winslow
Clinch is a talented writer who crafts many gripping scenes in Finn...[But] as a novelist, he manages to undercut his own effectiveness with some overloaded sentences, lit-crit phrasing and strained syntax, making choices of language that are jarring.
|
|
