false 102077 1400065917 9781400065912 583 208 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171484398m/102077.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/102077.Finn_A_Novel 58952 Jon Clinch 629 227 3 2 false Mon Jan 14 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Jan 12 22:49:28 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 29 07:39:07 -0800 2008
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.]]>