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Lädt ... Come Backvon Rudy Wiebe
   Keine Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch.   ) charlie68 | Apr 17, 2024 |  BurnFundLib | Mar 20, 2016 | Zeige 2 von 2
But Come Back isn’t an indictment of failed communication — or at least, it’s not only that. What Wiebe has created is a story about how damaging it is to attempt to protect ourselves by pretending we’re not hurting. Mostly, he’s created a very real portrait of a grief-stricken father trying to piece together his son from unreliable scraps of information. The only available material is prose that might well be deliberately misleading, and memories that have been warped, crystallized and suppressed over time Despite its bitter subject, Come Back’s tone is kind, and maintains an ethic of honesty. Even its starkest passages are underwritten with a kind of grave acceptance.... . Come Back’s themes are markedly similar to those explored in Miriam Toews’s latest, All My Puny Sorrows, which also deals with mental illness and suicide. But where Toews uses irony and dark humour to add levity, Wiebe’s lyricism softens his material. Wiebe, in Come Back, treats his characters’ Mennonite roots with gentleness. But Wiebe’s principal achievement in Come Back is his avoidance of consolation. There is no cure for the pain of premature loss. Longing for the missing loved one will tug at the heart, call that command in perpetuity. Wiebe makes us attend to the beauty of the call. Come Back is Rudy Wiebe’s first novel in more than a decade, and it is perhaps his most intensely personal work (Wiebe also lost his son to suicide). The writing is elegiac in tone and the novel, as is to be expected from Wiebe, is stylistically experimental and challenging. Much of the story unfolds through the tormented Gabe’s fragmentary and often inchoate thoughts, lists, and perceptions, left behind to be deciphered by the aged and confused Hal. Memory is a slippery thing, and there are no solid surfaces or straight lines through this story. Emerging from the disorder of the narrative, though, is a meditation on belief. Reading Come Back, I couldn’t help but think how refreshing it is, how great a relief it is, that we are finally talking more freely about depression and suicide. It’s partly the high-profile deaths of celebrities like Robin Williams, Peaches Geldof and L’Wren Scott. It’s partly that we’re becoming a society that’s more open about depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and end-of-life issues. Wiebe agrees, Come Back was published at a good time. “It seems pretty timely. Suicide keeps bobbling up again and again in horrible ways.”...Unlike Puny Sorrows, Come Back isn’t darkly comic. It is a serious, thoughtful portrait of a father who has suffered the ultimate loss. Humour in the context of the issue “is simply an evasion,” as Wiebe sees it. “It’s a way of getting around the core of what’s going on, which is the grief and pain we feel. I can spontaneously joke with the best of them if I want, and I’m not knocking it, it’s a good thing to laugh. But laughter in itself cannot carry you far.” Auszeichnungen
Hal Wiens, a retired professor, is mourning the sudden death of his loving wife, Yo. One snowy April morning, while drinking coffee with his Den friend Owl in south-side Edmonton, he sees a tall man in an orange downfill jacket walk past on the sidewalk. The jacket, the posture, the head and hair are unmistakable: it's his beloved oldest son, Gabriel. But it can't be-Gabriel killed himself 25 years ago. The sighting throws Hal's inert life into tumult. Come Back is a rare and beautiful novel about the humanity of living and dying, a masterwork from a treasured writer. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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 Google Books — Lädt ...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Klassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt: (3.38)
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