El's review
A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O'Nan
My first experience with Stewart O'Nan and not entirely sure what to expect. My knowledge of him is sparse: He grew up here in Pittsburgh and went on to write about the Red Sox with Stephen King and is often compared to Flannery O'Connor, Edgar Allan Poe and Shirley Jackson, all of which piqued my interest and helped convince me to pick up a book of his.
Postbellum Friendship, Wisconsin - Jacob Hansen is the town's constable, undertaker and pastor as his town is threatened by two simultaneous dangers: diphtheria and a raging fire. His job is to keep the peace in the town as the disease destroys lives around him and make the right decisions, always; though which decision is always the right, the best? - does one think as a constable, as an undertaker or as a pastor in times like those?
Written from a second person perspective (a point-of-view I have not been a fan of in the past, though it clearly serves an incredible power here), the reader becomes Jacob as he tri...more
Postbellum Friendship, Wisconsin - Jacob Hansen is the town's constable, undertaker and pastor as his town is threatened by two simultaneous dangers: diphtheria and a raging fire. His job is to keep the peace in the town as the disease destroys lives around him and make the right decisions, always; though which decision is always the right, the best? - does one think as a constable, as an undertaker or as a pastor in times like those?
Written from a second person perspective (a point-of-view I have not been a fan of in the past, though it clearly serves an incredible power here), the reader becomes Jacob as he tri...more
