From the bestselling author of the The House of God comes an ambitious novel about the complicated relationships between mothers and sons, doctors and patients, the past and the present, and love and death... Settled into a relationship with an Italian yoga instructor and working in Europe, Dr. Orville Rose's peace is shaken by his mother's death. On his return to Columbia, a Hudson River town of quirky people and "plagued by breakage," he learns that his mother has willed him a large sum of money, her 1981 Chrysler, and ...
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From the bestselling author of the The House of God comes an ambitious novel about the complicated relationships between mothers and sons, doctors and patients, the past and the present, and love and death... Settled into a relationship with an Italian yoga instructor and working in Europe, Dr. Orville Rose's peace is shaken by his mother's death. On his return to Columbia, a Hudson River town of quirky people and "plagued by breakage," he learns that his mother has willed him a large sum of money, her 1981 Chrysler, and her Victorian house in the center of town. There's one odd catch: he must live in her house for one year and thirteen days. As he struggles with his decision-to stay and meet the terms of the will or return to his life in Italy-Orville reconnects with family, reunites with former friends, and comes to terms with old rivals and bitter memories. In the process he'll discover his own history, as well as his mother's, and finally learn what it really means to be a healer, and to be healed.
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(This review is for the Advanced Reading Copy) A 40-year old doctor returns to his hometown at his mother's death and finds that the terms of the will require him to stay there for a year and thirteen days in order to inherit. While there, he helps out as a doctor for the town, tries to work out his love life, and contends with letters and appearances from his dead mother.
I have to give this book a mixed review. On the one hand, I did want to know what happened, I liked the appearances of the doctor's flying ghost of a mother, and the town that specialized in bad decisions. There were some memorable descriptions and ideas in here. By the time I finished the book, I was thinking about the choices we can make in our lives that lessen us, and felt encouraged to try to do better.
On the other hand, if I hadn't wanted to finish the book in order to write a fair review, I might have stopped partway. I could have done without the many graphic descriptions of broken and wounded people the doctor had to take care of. There were quite a few plot cliches that, especially when described out loud to my fiance, caused eye-rolling. I can 't be more specific without being a spoiler, so I'll just say that they are the "and it actually turns out that..." type.
I found myself wanting to know if this town was real (it appears to be based on Hudson, NY), and if the town history had any accuracy (it does). The author did his homework. But there is a glaring piece of urban mythology that is brought into the plot, and I'm still scratching my head about how it got into a real book. It was one of the accidents the doctor has to contend with - the classic "men drive onto the lake to ice fish, throw dynamite to make a hole, loyal dog retrieves the stick, returns, boom!" story (it's all over the internet). I was so startled to find this in a novel, that it knocked me out of the flow of the book.
Would I recommend the book? I wish it had been better. I guess I wouldn't tell someone not to read it, but I might not press it into their hands.
