Book Review: Descent
One of my beta readers for Reston Peace had some keen observations about multiple POVs in novels, and she recommended I read Tim Johnston’s Descent. I’m glad I did.
Descentfollows the Courtland family on their trip to Colorado. One morning, Caitlin goes for a jog up the mountain, with her younger brother Sean on his bike. When he is struck by a vehicle and suffers severe damage to his leg, Caitlin is abducted by the driver.
What follows is the dissolution of the family. Grant remains in Colorado to keep the search for his daughter in motion. Angela returns to Wisconsin and struggles to hold it together. And Sean runs away from home.
Johnston switches perspectives across the characters, each with heavy questions about how good and evil operate in the world. There is not much baring of souls here; the characters privately struggle and keep their questions to themselves. Instead of endless internal monologues, the author exploits the environment as representative of the mysteries they face:
“Before them lay a broad glade of aspens, white and spare; the pinewood rising beyond, and in the far distance above the highest pines stood the snowy crags of the Rockies, fantastic in scale and burning in the light of their own immensity.”
You can almost imagine Frost’s “The woods are lovely, dark and deep” as each character’s private mantra.
Johnston takes great care in describing every day actions that are undertaken as a form of normalcy against the great dread that hangs over father and son. Sean restlessly travels across the U.S. in search of absolution or at least appeasement for his sense of guilt for his sister’s disappearance. When he is arrested, Grant comes to pick him up and return him to Colorado so together they can continue their search for Caitlin. But even their coming together again is not a sign of bonding; there is always the danger that Sean will run off again:
"Whose woods these are,
I think I know ..."
“When [Grant] returned, the sun was low in the west behind the clouds and the room was nearly dark. The duvet had been thrown aside, and at the sight of the empty bed his heart dropped for a disbelieving instant before he saw that the bathroom door was shut, before he saw the seam of light at the floor and heard the exhaust fan groaning away on the other side.”
One interesting aspect about Sean's story is that Johnston refers to him as "the boy" throughout. It is as though he loses his identity with his sister's disappearance and only regains it at the end.
The ending is satisfyingly thrilling as well as poignantly crafted. Johnston is careful not to rush to the conclusion after the big climax; he gives the reader time to adjust to the new reality for the Courtland family.
My only complaint is that the book is very male dominated. There is a lot of cigarette smoking and a lot of brooding. The few female characters pretty much keep to the perimeter of the story. The mother, Angela, is more of a bookends character, and Caitlin is kept off-screen (albeit effectively) for much of the book.
Overall, a finely crafted novel that gave me some great lessons in POV.
Descentfollows the Courtland family on their trip to Colorado. One morning, Caitlin goes for a jog up the mountain, with her younger brother Sean on his bike. When he is struck by a vehicle and suffers severe damage to his leg, Caitlin is abducted by the driver.
What follows is the dissolution of the family. Grant remains in Colorado to keep the search for his daughter in motion. Angela returns to Wisconsin and struggles to hold it together. And Sean runs away from home.
Johnston switches perspectives across the characters, each with heavy questions about how good and evil operate in the world. There is not much baring of souls here; the characters privately struggle and keep their questions to themselves. Instead of endless internal monologues, the author exploits the environment as representative of the mysteries they face:“Before them lay a broad glade of aspens, white and spare; the pinewood rising beyond, and in the far distance above the highest pines stood the snowy crags of the Rockies, fantastic in scale and burning in the light of their own immensity.”
You can almost imagine Frost’s “The woods are lovely, dark and deep” as each character’s private mantra.
Johnston takes great care in describing every day actions that are undertaken as a form of normalcy against the great dread that hangs over father and son. Sean restlessly travels across the U.S. in search of absolution or at least appeasement for his sense of guilt for his sister’s disappearance. When he is arrested, Grant comes to pick him up and return him to Colorado so together they can continue their search for Caitlin. But even their coming together again is not a sign of bonding; there is always the danger that Sean will run off again:
"Whose woods these are,I think I know ..."
“When [Grant] returned, the sun was low in the west behind the clouds and the room was nearly dark. The duvet had been thrown aside, and at the sight of the empty bed his heart dropped for a disbelieving instant before he saw that the bathroom door was shut, before he saw the seam of light at the floor and heard the exhaust fan groaning away on the other side.”
One interesting aspect about Sean's story is that Johnston refers to him as "the boy" throughout. It is as though he loses his identity with his sister's disappearance and only regains it at the end.
The ending is satisfyingly thrilling as well as poignantly crafted. Johnston is careful not to rush to the conclusion after the big climax; he gives the reader time to adjust to the new reality for the Courtland family.
My only complaint is that the book is very male dominated. There is a lot of cigarette smoking and a lot of brooding. The few female characters pretty much keep to the perimeter of the story. The mother, Angela, is more of a bookends character, and Caitlin is kept off-screen (albeit effectively) for much of the book.
Overall, a finely crafted novel that gave me some great lessons in POV.
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