Wednesday, February 24, 2021

IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING by Austin Ratner

Isidore Auberon is a good man who dies too young, leaving behind two young sons and a heartbroken wife.  Leo is the older of the sons and the main subject of this novel.  He is much more bereft than his younger brother Mack, who basically has no memory of his father.  This disparity between the two boys’ grief drives a wedge between them.  Leo struggles with his anger, while striving to live up to his father’s legacy.  I felt that the author tried a little too hard at times to be literary and instead managed to overdramatize Leo’s angst with wordy prose.  Leo is not a particularly likeable character, but he is all we have here, as Mack is not fully fleshed out.  In fact, Mack disappears frequently, just to avoid Leo’s company.   Their mother remarries, and, although Philip is a loving stepfather to the boys, he lacks interest is some activities that Leo and Mac have come to enjoy, such as baseball.  Following his stellar academic performance in high school, Leo enrolls at Yale, treading a convoluted path to get there that sours the whole experience for him.  Honestly, it’s hard to root for a guy who keeps sabotaging his relationships and has allowed grief to define his entire life.  Mack eventually reaches out to Leo and invites him to join him on a road trip in an effort to repair the division between them and restore the camaraderie of their early childhood.  This book just did not command my attention, and the author fails to share with us certain important aspects of Leo’s adult life.  Did he graduate from Yale?  If not, where?  He went to med school, but did he become a doctor?  On finishing this book, I felt that these omissions had some sort of artistic purpose that left me frustrated and disappointed.

No comments: