false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173743662m/321623.jpg 321623 11 When his town's sleepy summer tranquility is shattered by an outbreak of diphtheria, Jacob Hansen--constable, deacon, and undertaker--stares at an impossible dilemma: save both himself and his family or observe his many duties? Although he's nearly convinced that it's possible to do both, the inexorable and crushing horror of Stewart O'Nan's fifth novel, <I>A Prayer for the Dying</I>, is that evil doesn't flinch, that its insistence can obliterate goodness, corrupt humility. "When won't faith save you?" Jacob wonders; the silence soon deafens him.<p> An ostensibly inured Civil War veteran, Jacob watches helplessly as his neighbors in tiny Friendship, Wisconsin, are stricken with disease: simply hearing a mother say of her daughter, "She's sick," becomes chilling. Yet even as his wife and baby fall ill, Jacob patiently, dutifully tends to the helpless and buries the dead. When panic erupts, however, and he grapples with the tragedies accumulating before him, he feels the prick of spiritual doubt, even succumbs to violence. "Is this the devil's work?" Jacob asks as he struggles to discern the good in a world without order, watches those he serves turn against him, and disregards his own moral outrage.<p> O'Nan's style is taut and often oddly lovely, its immediacy braced by an unnerving second-person voice. The novel is, at root, spiritually terrifying. It forces us to consider at what remove we truly are from evil. Overwhelmed with checking his own despair, Jacob begins by pondering how to halt wickedness and ineluctably finds himself sustaining its slow creep. You wonder if he ever had a prayer. <I>--Ben Guterson</I> 312340 1999 A Prayer for the Dying total:422|5:150|4:159|3:92|2:15|1:6| 422 1698 622 86 4 3 false false Mon Dec 15 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 15 10:51:57 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 15 13:19:13 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 2 false false Sun Sep 14 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Sep 14 12:58:49 -0700 2008 Sun Sep 14 16:51:32 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Tue Feb 24 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Mar 01 06:00:34 -0800 2009 Sun Mar 01 06:02:45 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Mon Oct 19 09:35:23 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 19 09:35:23 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Mar 12 15:54:29 -0700 2007 Mon Mar 12 15:57:20 -0700 2007 Blood Meridian, come to think), though, very much more so than any traditional "horr...more...]]> 3 1 false true Sat Jun 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 20 18:50:20 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 22 19:47:16 -0700 2009 Wisconsin Death Trip was rather popular in the upper Midwest. The most shocking of the photographs to our modern sensibilities were those of dead children in their coffins. I kept thinking about that book as I read Stewart O'Nan's A Prayer Before Dying...more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Jun 13 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Jun 07 11:52:22 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 13 06:03:35 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 2 false false Tue Jun 03 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu May 22 13:52:32 -0700 2008 Tue Jun 03 17:00:02 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 2 false false Fri Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 1999 Sat Jun 16 16:44:11 -0700 2007 Sat Jun 16 18:00:29 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Jan 03 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 04 13:10:18 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 04 13:10:56 -0800 2009
The writing is...more...]]> 5 1 false false Wed Aug 22 20:38:57 -0700 2007 Wed Aug 22 20:43:38 -0700 2007 Everyday People, O'Nan simply cannot be pinned to a genre, a style or even a time. This book is my favorite of his novels, though. Duty, calamity ...more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Nov 25 08:03:15 -0800 2008 Sat Feb 14 18:41:27 -0800 2009 4 2 false false Wed Aug 06 15:51:22 -0700 2008 Wed Aug 06 15:57:46 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Fri Feb 20 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 20 19:37:08 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 20 19:46:11 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Sat Mar 01 09:50:54 -0800 2008 Sat Mar 01 09:51:50 -0800 2008 5 0 false false Tue Nov 10 14:15:53 -0800 2009 Wed Nov 25 12:39:24 -0800 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false true Sat Aug 08 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jan 10 10:48:54 -0800 2009 Thu Aug 20 19:23:11 -0700 2009 - I'm curious also about the ending? When he gets out of the lake with his shovel and heads back to Friendship to be with the ones he loves. Does that mean he is going to properly bury everyone in Friendship because he loves the town and the people so much. O...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Aug 23 08:59:36 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 23 09:01:48 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Aug 24 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 01 06:47:58 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 24 10:32:23 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Aug 25 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 22 10:42:04 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 25 18:37:22 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=321623