Play Book Tag discussion

I had so looked forward to this book which is noteworthy for his nominations for Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award and William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for Fiction. The description sounded right up my alley a young Swedish boy journeys east from San Francisco across the United States. A coming of age and a journey combined, few plots I love more than that.

One can be easily fooled. The reviews are praise laden and the ratings are high, so in I went unsuspecting to a west of nightmarish qualities. The surreal portrait of the 19th century west could have been a Dali minus the melting clocks.

Our hero, if one can call him that is Haken, a young Swede whose parents send him to America, to New York, with his brother Linus. Haken somehow becomes separated from his brother when they change ships in Britain and after that finds himself on a ship bound for San Francisco. Haken misunderstands the relative size of the country and figures to just head east to NYC and find Linus, easy-peasy. Everybody misunderstands Haken's name and he simply becomes Hawk.

Well of course it is not so easy. It quite reminds me of a book which I read some time ago called The Heartsong of Charging Elk. While Charging Elk was set primarily in France the stories are parallel and the emotion is identical.

I'm not a person who needs sweetness and light but the inclination of the spiral wore on me. I know that others appreciated it far more.