I am usually not a fan of National Book Award winners. And after reading Marilynne Robinson's "Home," I didn't think anything could top it. But they got it right this year. Matthiessen's trilogy is a book that (if I know anything about myself) will haunt me for a long time. It is one of the ten best novels I've ever read, and (as most of you know) I don't take ranking's lightly.

Of the three novels, I am fondest of the first--formerly published as Killing Mister Watson. Matthiessen's vernacular is challenging, but true. If you didn't know better, you would guess that it were written by William Faulkner. In the end, the jumble of stories establishes a nice first draft of the trilogy's entire narrative. But this narrative gets revised and then revised again in the second and third novels.

The middle book especially appeals to me as an historian. It raises all the questions that historians grapple with everyday: what obligations do we have toward our subjects? how do our subjectivities shape the (his)stories we write? etc. The middle section of this book is the only moment when Matthiessen loses coherence. But in a 1,000 page tome, that is bound to happen once or twice, right? In this novel, Henry Short (not the main character--that is Mr. Watson--but the "best supporting character") emerges as one of the most complicated and compelling characters I've ever read.

Novel #3 lets us into all of the little crevices that remain from the first two novels. Key events are totally recast. We are forced to choose our heroes/villians--often with equal amounts of evidence on both sides.

Reading "Shadow Country" takes patience and time. But this was a great first book of the new year.