Finn: A Novel

by Jon Clinch (Goodreads author)

book data

571 ratings, 3.73 average rating, 211 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		26%
4		35%
3		26%
2		6%
1		4%

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published

March 11th 2008 (first published 2007) by Random House Trade Paperbacks

binding

Paperback, 320 pages

literary awards

John Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize Finalist (2007); Named an ALA Notable Book for 2008. Named a Best Book of 2007 by the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Christian Science Monitor

isbn

0812977149 (isbn13: 9780812977141)

description

In this masterful debut by a major new voice in fiction, Jon Clinch takes us on a journey into the history and heart of one of American literature’s m...more

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03/29/08

Gåry rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

bookshelves: general-fiction, southern-gothic

Finn is a beautiful work in an expanded universe (to steal a term more often used in certain other genres) originated by Mark Twain. I found Mr. Clinch's take on the Huckleberry Finn story to be rather inspired. His characterizations remind me of the best of Cormac McCarthy and this book sort of evoked Suttree for me.

The liberties Clinch takes with the character of Huckleberry are perfectly justified and he even takes time after the story to explain his intentions which I found tho...more

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8 comments

12/05/07

Grace rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

bookshelves: 2007

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: strong stomached fiction lovers

I usually have a pretty strong stomach when it comes to fiction. In television and movies, I can handle most anything and am not really bothered by violence, gore, or abuse. Because I don't see pictures when I read, this is even more the case with books than with visual media--give me the nasty stuff, I can take it.

Jon Cinch's Finn, however, bothered me. The book is not supremely graphic in its gore, but it does contain multiple murders, one of which includes body dismemberment, and ...more I usually have a pretty strong stomach when it comes to fiction. In television and movies, I can handle most anything and am not really bothered by violence, gore, or abuse. Because I don't see pictures when I read, this is even more the case with books than with visual media--give me the nasty stuff, I can take it.

Jon Cinch's Finn, however, bothered me. The book is not supremely graphic in its gore, but it does contain multiple murders, one of which includes body dismemberment, and the sexual abuse of both an adult and a child, and something about how these scenes were written stayed with me. So before I say anything else, take that to heart--it's violent, and the violence, for whatever reason, stuck with even my hardened heart.

That being said, it's a hell of a book. The task Cinch sets for himself is not an easy one. While remaining true to events and characters portrayed in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Cinch tells the story of Huck's ne'er do well alcoholic father, "Pap" Finn (who even in Cinch's book is never given a first name). Moving back and forth in time, Cinch weaves the threads of Finn's strange and horrific childhood, his early relationship with Mary, Huck's escaped/stolen slave mother, his loss of Huck to the Widow Douglas, Mary's murder, and eventually Finn's own untimely death.

It has been a long time (two decades, perhaps) since I've read Twain's books, so I don't remember all of the details surrounding Pap Finn, but it seems that Cinch works into his narrative explanations for things that go unexplained in Twain's own work, such as the discovery of Pap Finn's body in a whitewashed room with walls covered in bizarre charcoal drawings (these drawings are done by Finn himself as he descends into madness after murdering Mary). What he does not try to do, however, is take on Twain's tone (as Alexandria Ripley did--poorly--in her less successful Gone With the Wind sequel, Scarlett). Perhaps because he doesn't spend much time trying to write the same characters on which Twain focused (Huck in particular), Cinch has no need to imitate Twain's style of writing, and I think the book is better for it.

Cinch writes Pap Finn to be as bigoted, mean, and drunk as Twain's supporting character, but fleshes him out in his own voice, making him a real character with a past and reasons for his horrible actions, rather than just a foil for Huck. This (albeit limited) sympathy for Finn, as well as Cinch's original characters, is the strength of the novel. The places where Cinch overlaps with Twain (Judge Thatcher, Widow Douglas, etc.) are a bit weaker. It seems almost as if Cinch is too careful with these characters, perhaps afraid to upset Twain purists. Tellingly, Tom Sawyer doesn't appear at all, and most of Huck's appearances are at a younger age than when we first meet him in Twain.

Please do not think you'll love Finn if you loved Twain's books. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are children's characters, and though their adventures did get a little wild, and even a little political, their stories are nothing like Finn. Cinch's book is almost gothic, the cornerstones of its story are violence, alcoholism, and madness. There are no frolicking adventures here, and what humor there is has a very dark underbelly. Finn is every inch a contemporary adult novel, even if its basis is in children's literature from a previous century. However, it's a very good contemporary novel, and if read as such will likely stay with you in a way most contemporary novels don't. Cinch balances the horrific aspects of his story with just enough hope to keep your turning the pages, and at the end you are left feeling as if it was good that you read that, even if reading it was harder than you'd expected it to be. If you think you have the stomach for it, this is a book I would definitely recommend.(less)

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07/02/07

Wendy rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

Read in May, 2007

The story of Huckleberry Finn's father, but no light-hearted jaunt down the Mississippi. Dark, but pure poetry to read. Beautifully written. You hate Finn and you know he's going to die, but you root for him, nonetheless. I think this is the REAL story of Huckleberry Finn. A must read for anyone.

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06/28/07

Jim rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

Read in January, 2007

When I was in the seventh grade, St. James’s drama department put on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and I was cast as Alfred Temple, Tom’s competitor for the attention of Becky Thatcher. Tom and Alfred come to blows over her affections and on opening night, Tom tackled me and pinned me to the stage. The violence of Tom’s rough attack caught me off-guard. Needless to say, it hadn’t gone quite like that during rehearsals.

On the second night, I punched Tom Sawyer in the face, an...more When I was in the seventh grade, St. James’s drama department put on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and I was cast as Alfred Temple, Tom’s competitor for the attention of Becky Thatcher. Tom and Alfred come to blows over her affections and on opening night, Tom tackled me and pinned me to the stage. The violence of Tom’s rough attack caught me off-guard. Needless to say, it hadn’t gone quite like that during rehearsals.

On the second night, I punched Tom Sawyer in the face, and it was on. Alfred Temple, it should be noted, was a teacher’s pet and I was costumed as a cross between Alfalfa and Little Lord Fauntleroy. Alfred is not supposed to know how to throw an uppercut and Tom was pretty irate. On the third and final night of the run, Tom Sawyer and I stole the show with a full-on Jerry Springer-style battle royal. Technically, Tom won, but only because I let him, and only because I had to.

The show, after all, must go on, and on it goes in Jon Clinch’s debut novel Finn, a compelling retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point-of-view of Pap, Huck’s alcoholic father. At the heart of the novel is the unsolved mystery that Twain left behind for his readers to mull over: How did Pap come to be shot in a room filled with weird paraphernalia? (Clue: Alfred Temple didn’t do it.)

Although Finn’s fate is known from the onset (he dead) and the plot is defined by the parameters established in Twain’s novels, there is a score of delicious twists and turns that a clumsy summary would risk ruining. Suffice to say, the biggest revelation in Clinch’s novel is the writing, which is as muscular and deliberate as the act of poling a skiff upriver.

With prose that is reminiscent of Faulkner’s early Yoknapatawpha novels, Cormac McCarthy's Tennessee novels (particularly Child of God), and of course, Twain, Finn gives us an honest-to-God yarn that’s as pleasing to puzzle over as it is to read. Finn lives in a falling down house by the river and with Clinch’s lush descriptions one can almost smell the gutted cat fish and river rot. There's something magnificently voyeuristic about Finn's crimes happening in plain sight of anyone who happens to be taking the air on an upper deck of a riverboat as it chugs up the Mississippi.

From Twain’s novels we know that Finn is a violent, bigoted drunk and Clinch endeavors to explain how he got that way. There’s no question that Finn is as vile a villain that ever skulked on two legs, but once we meet his father we can’t help but look at him with a glimmering—however faint—of sympathy.

One of the paradoxical aspects of Finn’s personality is that early on he manages to escape the yoke of his father's seething hatred and sets out on a path that is, in its own way, wiser and more compassionate than the road taken by his father. Ultimately, however, Finn repudiates this way of knowing the world and is revealed to be very much his father's son – to the peril of everyone he comes into contact with, and none more so than Huckleberry, the most cherished outsider in American letters.

(Excerpted from a review published in February 2007 at The Elegant Variation:
[http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2007/02/tev_guest_revie_1.html])
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06/11/07

Izetta Autumn rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

bookshelves: general-fiction, washingtonpostbookworld

Read in April, 2008

I am not even sure where to begin in rating Finn by Jon Clinch. First you should probably ignore my star rating, because this isn't a book whose rating, will give any true indication of the love/hate relationship you may have with the book.

You'll love it, because without a doubt, Clinch has a talent as a writer. He feels like a modern-day Faulkner. His language is fluid, poetic, evocative, and then in an instant, sparse and nearly mechanical it its accuracy and sharpness.

...more

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09/07/08

Spuddie rated it:

(review of isbn 142812439X)

This is the story of Finn, the infamous Huckleberry’s father, as mean and despicable a fictional character (or a real one, come to that) as ever graced the pages of a book, I think. His character was eluded to occasionally during the telling of Mark Twain’s classic tale, but this is his story—the tale of his upbringing, his adulthood, his relationships, his prejudices, and how Huck came to be as well. If the author is attempting to elicit sympathy for Finn—and I honestly don’t think th...more

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01/12/08

FuzzyKoala rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in January, 2008

I had this book recommended to me by a friend when I told them that I was reading "The Adventures of Huck Finn" by Mark Twain for the first time. I'm kind of into these books that give an alternative view of a popular world if done well, and having just finished Mark Twain's story it seemed like as good of a time to give it a shot as any, so I picked up the book.

At first it reminded me a lot of The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. Gone is the first-person speaking style of Huck Fi...more I had this book recommended to me by a friend when I told them that I was reading "The Adventures of Huck Finn" by Mark Twain for the first time. I'm kind of into these books that give an alternative view of a popular world if done well, and having just finished Mark Twain's story it seemed like as good of a time to give it a shot as any, so I picked up the book.

At first it reminded me a lot of The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. Gone is the first-person speaking style of Huck Finn, replaced by a third-person narrator with an eloquent vocabulary, which is occasionally interrupted by very minimalistic dialogue. Events and phrases tend to repeat themselves over and over, until they almost become variations on a theme. This might become tiresome to some readers, and about halfway through I started feeling like the story was kind of a low-rent version of something Cormac McCarthy would write. But at some point in-between that thought and my finishing the book, the whole thing just kind of clicked for me. He's playing in someone else's universe, but Jon Clinch has crafted a very solid story that he can call his own, about America's history of violence, about the conflict of Nature and Law that dwells within us, the ideas of "good" and "evil" that we inherit from our parents, and about just how hard it is for anyone in this world to find peace within ourselves. An early passage about "The Judge," Pap Finn's father, is the book in a nutshell; if you like that, you'll like the book. If not, well, keep reading anyway. It took a while for me to change my opinion.

Although I would recommend the book to anyone who likes reading, I can't guarantee you'll like it if you liked Huck Finn, maybe especially if you liked Huck Finn. The book is studiously faithful to the events of Mark Twain's novel, and in fact seeing how the plot works toward several of those events was part of the fun of reading it for me, but it also puts its own interpretation on several characters that's a little controversial. For one, "Pap" Finn (who remains nameless even in Clinch's novel) is the prodigal son of a wealthy judge, and the brother of a wealthy lawyer. Secondly, Huck Finn is revealed to be a quarter black. Both of these have thematic significance in Clinch's story, and I ultimately think that the author honors the spirit of Mark Twain's characters, but if you're a big fan of his classic and what you see is what you get, you might understandably be upset. Other characters from Huck Finn make appearances here (one of which, I was happy to see, was one of the carpetbaggers, who turned up in a brief cameo; whether it was the duke or the king I can't remember now), though none of them are significantly altered.

Also be prepared for some pretty unflinching depictions of violence. Although I found some (very) black humor in Finn's trying to dig a bullet out of a man's shoulder and killing him by mistake, most of the violent acts in the book, detailed thoroughly and pitilessly, can make the story seem troubling or bleak.(less)

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06/28/07

Matthew rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

Using Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a blueprint, particularly the scene where Jim and Huck discover Pap Finn's body, Jon Clinch elaborates on the life of Huck's alcoholic and abusive father, giving him a whole novel to himself. While some scenes from Huckleberry Finn are touched upon again (as when Finn kidnaps - or frees, depending on your attitude - Huck from the Widow Douglas's house), and while Clinch populates this world with an interesting supporting cast (notably: Fin...more Using Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a blueprint, particularly the scene where Jim and Huck discover Pap Finn's body, Jon Clinch elaborates on the life of Huck's alcoholic and abusive father, giving him a whole novel to himself. While some scenes from Huckleberry Finn are touched upon again (as when Finn kidnaps - or frees, depending on your attitude - Huck from the Widow Douglas's house), and while Clinch populates this world with an interesting supporting cast (notably: Finn's slave/wife Mary and his imposing father who is known simply as The Judge), this is Finn's book, and we are stuck with him in most every scene, for better or for worse.

Clinch nails the atmosphere - dark, muggy, violent - but his Biblical style gets tired and seems like an impersonation of such better writers as Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy (even Clinch's Judge shares a name and many traits with the domineering and timeless Judge of McCarthy's Blood Meridian). This derivative style could possibly be forgiven if the story or characters had enough weight to support it, but there is little narrative push, and the characters, though interesting, fail to come alive.

There's a "twist" involving Huck's parentage, which, in his self-congratulatory author's note at the end, Clinch believes even Twain himself would have admired, and the novel does provide a darker glimpse at life on the Mississippi back then than Huck's childhood perspective did. But reading it just made me want to re-read the original (and better) Huckleberry Finn. Yes, Finn is ambitious in its goals, but hopefully for his next book, Clinch won't reach so far past his abilities.

"His penmanship is poor and his spelling is worse and his grammar is the worst of all but these things matter not, because not long after he begins he gives off writing almost entirely and commences to draw in a manner befitting some primitive cave painter working by torchlight to document and dispel demons both real and imagined."

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02/23/07

Nicole rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

Read in March, 2007

recommends it for: People who like their fiction revisionist and gritty

Outstanding. I tend to read 'literary fiction,' but I don't particularly aim for books with a lot of darkness - but this book is pitch black. No heroes, no light, no redemption. What an incredible book. It has been a really, really long time since I felt truly sad when a book was over, but when I turned over the last page of Finn I was actually bummed out for a minute because it was over. The author stays within the time frame created by Twain, but creates a backstory for minor characters that a...more

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09/16/07

Melody rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

Read in February, 2007

Mesmerising imagining of Pap Finn, Huck's drunken racist pig of a sire. Violent, horrific and astonishingly well-written, Clinch's first novel rushes in where no one's ever dared go. What Clinch has accomplished here is nothing short of breath-taking. Finn's a bad man who isn't the least bit likable, which makes this novel even more remarkable in its humanity and even tenderness. The tone is just remote and scholarly enough to keep one a step away from Finn, but I could certainly smell him. High...more

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04/21/08

Suzanne rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

Read in April, 2008

In Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Huck's father is a menacing drunk who crops up throughout the novel, often making trouble for Huck. John Clinch's Finn takes the father as the main character and describes just how Finn became so cruel - with many of the scenes intersecting with those of the original novel. What I really liked was that Clinch did not try to imitate Twain's use of dialect, rather, he creates his own version that is original yet convincing.

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11/28/07

laura rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

Read in November, 2007

I love Mark Twain and was a little skeptical about fiction in 2007 reimagining the life of Pap Finn. I was wrong. On top of it all, it imagines Huck Finn a mulatto. The racism and shame of miscegenation is a powerful force throughout this novel leading Pap to kill his love. I read it in a night and so can you.....
Oh and by the way, this was everything that March was not. See earlier review of that book.

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10/30/07

Sue rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: Mary Kim Schreck

I learned that evil is what we create amongst ourselves. The pain we inflict on others richochets back to us after a time. What we hate in ourselves is what we hate in others. The darkness of human existence knows few bounds.
Clinch creates a world of evil and humanity in this minor, but now very important, character in Huckleberry Finn.

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07/03/07

Tom rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

Read in June, 2007

A very innovative and captivating approach to the Huck Finn prequel. The author's imagination is well outside the box in the telling of Pap Finn's life and relationships. A dark novel that meshes perfectly with the much lighter Huckleberry Finn. Congratulations on a great first novel!

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12/17/07

[riley] rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

Weeks later and I still can't get the images out of my head. Finn was a mesmerizing read that I recommend to any Mark Twain fan.

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09/02/07

Ruth rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

The best book I read last year. This guy can WRITE!

R

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08/23/08

Amanda rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

bookshelves: book-club-made-me-do-it

Read in November, 2008

recommended to Amanda by: Todd Ewing
recommends it for: Lovers of Southern Gothic; those who admire (but don't worship) the work of Mark Twain

Well, I'm not really sure what to say about Finn. I can't say that I loved it, nor can I say that I hated it. I wish that I had read Huckleberry Finn before reading the book so that I could make more comparisons between the two, and I would have known more about the storyline that inspired Clinch. I admire that Clinch didn't try to imitate Mark Twain's writing style; to have done so would have robbed his portrayal of Finn (who I understand, even in Twain's work, was hinted at being a dark, m...more

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06/09/08

sally rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in June, 2008

I was torn whether to give this a 3 or 4 star... I read huckleberry finn and the adventures of tom sawyer probably six or seven times each when i was little so I'm torn between being excited that Clinch added another book to the plot, and offended that he would presume to write it :)

I loved that Clinch dove right into the issue of race and slavery, and I thought Huck's lineage was totally believable and in keeping with Twain's spirit. I almost felt that Twain could have written this ...more

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02/28/08

Zach rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

bookshelves: 2008-books, b--club--fiction

Read in March, 2008

The premise sounds like some sort of "fan fiction", however the book has received strong reviews--I expected it to be similar to Rozencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead--a retelling of a classic story from another perspective. It is not. Huckelberry Finn is almost a minor character, and other than a few characters from the original (Judge Thatcher, the widow) crossing paths with Pap Finn, there is very little direct connection with the two stories. Pap Finn does come nosey around for ...more

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02/16/08

Terry rated it:

(review of isbn 1400065917)

Read in January, 2007

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