The Wilding - Benjamin Percy
I can understand why people might characterize Benjamin Percy 's novel as a a eco environmental novel, but it really isn't, or at least it wasn't for me. This finely wrought story is about how people cope with the expectations others lay on them. Fathers and sons, husbands and wives, people with whom we are convinced we are in love - we all perform to some expectation -- ours or theirs. Over the years, we develop coping skills so that there is peaceful co-existance. But Percy reminds us that tragedy, boredom, obsession can be a catalyst to move us off walking that center line. Some will survive and be stronger. Some will be torn apart. But few move forward unchanged. I loved this book. The characters were real and flawed without being caricatures set in a land grab, stop the development story. Ironically, I read this book on a flight to Seattle. Percy brought the right sort of balance to make we want to visit the Pacific Northwest and Oregon in particular, while also making me feel very much at home.
He's an Author I'd Like to Fuck.
Loki
ReplyDeleteI really like that you show your interest in writing and share book recommendations with us. I also know exactly what you mean about wanting to fuck an author...When a man can write so evocatively about characters and the human condition, they show a power of both observation and compassion that makes you want to know them intimately - and then perhaps if you are drawn to these kind of sage and sensitive and sensuous men, the leap to imagining bonding through male sexuality is not so far.
Now that you broach the subject, I was transfixed by Ethan Canin with the first book of his I read, Of Kings and Planets, whose very first sentence begins with the setup of....I was seduced by New York ...the book, painful and sad as some of the characters become, had me so moved and seduced as a reader to want more of him. Plus when he wrote it in 1999 he was such a handsome dark haired guy. Even now in his 50's and gray haired, he is a sexy man. And now that you have made me think of it, I would love to fuck him.