Book Review: The Returned by Jason Mott
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Jason Mott is primarily known as a poet and that helps make sense of this book because just like a lot of poetry, it’s beautifully written but it’s not really clear what it all means.
Harold and Lucille Hargrave are in their seventies and have lived most of their adult lives with the trauma of their son drowning when he was just eight years old. And then one day, one ordinary day, an FBI agent shows up on their doorstep with Jacob Hargrave. He hasn’t aged a day since he died and much to everybody’s confusion, he’s very much alive. And he isn’t the only one. The Returned are turning up everywhere.
Nobody knows why and nobody knows what to do with them. Some families happily take their former loved ones in. Others shun them. Those whose loved ones haven’t come back wonder why. And then the government gets involved (always the point at which things go to hell). They start setting up internment camps, capturing the Returned and confining them while they try to figure out what to do with them. When they come for Jacob, Harold refuses to let him go alone even though he isn’t sure that the boy is really his son.
The internment camp quickly becomes overcrowded and the basic facilities fail and become non-existent. (It’s all very reminiscent of refugee camps.) And the True Living movement, basically a group of old white guys, insists there’s no place for the Returned and that they need to go back to where they came from. (It’s all very reminiscent of the anti-immigration movement.) And if they won’t go of their own accord, then they’re willing to help them on their way (kill them).
It’s clear that this book is a commentary, it’s just not clear on what. Jacob seems more like a prop than a child and the rest of the characters all seem to be either the very worst or the very best kind of people with few showing a complexity of actions and emotions. The only exception is the FBI agent who brings Jacob home but we don’t see enough of him for his complexity to break through the black-and-whiteness of everybody else.
Perhaps the biggest problem is that the one thing everybody wants to know is the one thing that everybody seems to be avoiding asking about. I have no doubt that it was done deliberately by the author to heighten the suspense. So what is it? The thing that everybody wants to know? The thing that everybody avoids? You know, that thing? You know? See how annoying it is?
That thing is they ask the Returned every question except the one that everybody reading the book wants answered: what do the Returned remember about their deaths and their return and more specifically the time in between? And when they finally do, the answer and subsequently the end of the book are both wholly unsatisfying.
I’m almost indifferent to this book. While the writing is lovely, when I closed the back cover for the last time, I realised I didn’t really have an opinion (kind of a problem for someone who writes a lot of book reviews). I think the intention was to make people think but I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be thinking about.
In a word: hmmm.
2.5 stars
*First published on Goodreads 10 March 2018
