American Purgatorio

by John Haskell

American Purgatorio is the story of a happily married man who discovers, as he walks out of a convenience store, that his wife has suddenly vanished. In cool, precise prose, written as both a detective story and a meditation on the seven deadly sins, Haskell tells a story that ranges from the brownstones of New York City to the sandy beaches of Southern California. The novel follows the journey of a man whose object of desire is both heartbreaking and ephemeral, and confirms John Haskell's reputation as "one of those rare authors who makes language seem limitless in its possibilities" ( Los Angeles Times ).

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Novels, Literature, Literary Fiction, Book Club, American

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ha...

Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Glenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are times while reading American Purgatorio where the reader feels lost. Good. Both the main character, Jack, and the reader discover where they are, and seem to arrive at the moment the words appear on the page, their arrival, their circumstances as much of a surprise to the character as it is to the reader.

There's a great way that Jack explains his feelings--to himself as much as to us--throughout the book, coming across his own responses to things that do not necessarily further him along the path he wishes to be on. The path back to his wife. It also beautifully illustrates the way we rationalize our actions retroactively, as if we were one step behind ourselves , our emotions. And so we only later realize--that's what I was doing. This is where I am. Trying not only to find where we are, but trying to find where we should be.

One of the ways John Haskell in the best sense plays with the reader is giving us overwhelming moments of breakdown pushed right up against moment of bliss, of near-transcendence coupled with terrible realization of despair. In a review I read, Jack was described as a “shell.” And I think that's an accidentally perfect description, but not in the way the writer intended. For, like a shell, held close you can hear echoes of what it once contained; where it came from. And what was lost. And the closer the reader allows herself to get to this character, this seemingly emptied man, the deeper into the heart he sinks, making the dénouement of the book all the more powerful.

This is a quietly devastating book; a love story, a road story, a ghost story, yet without the clichés inherent in all those well-worn genres. And if you read the section about the claw-foot tub and don't well up, well…there may be something essentially shell-like about you, too.

[Makis Dionis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ένα road trip, λέξεων και συναισθημάτων. Με πορεία χαραγμένη από τα 7 θανάσιμα αμαρτήματα ο Haskell, διαχειρίζεται την απώλεια και την μοναξιά μέσα από την ψυχολογία των ανθρώπων του περιθωρίου που συναντά ο Τζακ στην διαδρομή του

Και όπως λέει ο τεράστιος Χανκ , κατά κόσμον Charles Bukowski:

Those faces you see every day on the streets, were not created entirely without hope. Be kind to them

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

An oblique road novel that starts as part 'The Vanishing' and part Don DeLillo. It also seemed at times a complement to 'The Stranger.' But by the end of the journey I found myself standing on the shoulder shaking with admiration. Where you think this road is going...it ain't.

[Tamara Bennett · Rating 1 out of 5]

horrendous. this guy was such a flake, i didn't feel any connection to him & certainly not any sympathy for him. plot/non-plot went nowhere. boring while being weird. wanted to quit reading it but just knew it would have a point eventually. wrong.

[Ryan Lottermoser · Rating 2 out of 5]

“On the one hand I had a mind of my own, and on the other hand I had another mind, and I seemed to be somewhere between the two.”

[Sallie Dunn · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I am writing my review tonight, I won’t post it or my rating until our book club discussion occurs. No hints for my fellow book clubbers!

————

⭐️⭐️

Not sure if this is the weirdest book I ever read, but hands down, the weirdest this year. Told entirely in the first person, the narrator is on a wild goose chase looking for his wife, who disappeared while they were at a highway rest stop for gas and goodies. He travels clear across the US and has strange adventures all along the way.

I think there is somewhat a stream of consciousness in this novel and while the ending had me feeling somewhat sympathetic to the narrator, (if he ever had a name, I sure didn’t retain it), but I never really connected with the main character. Reading this book was the first time I felt a book club choice to be a chore to read.

I’ve belonged to this book club group for seven years this coming January, so I guess that’s a testimonial to the quality of books we usually read.

PS. According to my book club buddies, I missed a major point in this novel, which I will not share in case anyone is interested in reading it. Suffice it to say that members who were familiar with Dante’s writings understood it way better than I did. Star wise, out of six bookie friends, American Purgatorio was awarded 5 stars, 4 stars and 3 stars. The other 3 of us gave it 2.

Goodreads 2024 Challenge - Book #94 of 120

[Ian Mapp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is a book that is fairly dull until the last thirty pages (when everything comes together) actually any good?

Host of rave reviews on the we site.

Our protaganist loses his wife at a service station and embarks on a road trip across america to try and find her.

The premise - very much the vanishing.

The book is divided into the seven deadly sins, introduced in Latin (I so wish I knew this before the start) and the chapters and people he meets are described in a dream like manner which makes hard reading and a certain amount of incredulousness.

Towards the end, it is revealed in a page that is repeated in case you missed it that his wife is dead, killed in a crash. And from that point on the book improves as you realise that of course, he himself is also dead.

Quite how this relates to some of the physcial things that he describes happending to him, I dont know but it does (half) explain the reactions of other people to him.

A deep book that does stay with you... a challenge to read but one that is ultimately satisfying and makes you want to read again.

Very interesting.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Assuming you "figured it out" prematurely, I think it's easy to dismiss/criticize this book like some other readers here have. Maybe it was because I came to this book after a long fiction hiatus or maybe just because it came to me in the post-holiday stupor, I didn't try to think too much about where it was going and preferred to just drift along with Jack as he looked for his missing wife, Anne. It's probably no coincidence that Haskell's writing made that drift feel very natural.

American Purgatorio is a really sad and beautiful tale of identity, perception, and the interaction between the two. It seemed like a strange little book at first, but in the end, it all made sense. Loved it.

[Erik · Rating 1 out of 5]

I finished this book for the mere sake of finishing it. I suspected early on that it was not my type of tale. It was odd (which I like), but the main character and his actions were so entirely unbelievable that I never connected in even the slightest way.

[Punk · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave this 40 pages, but it is what it is. It's a book where language happens and not much else, and I just couldn't take the ponderously slow pomo prose.

[Wendy · Rating 1 out of 5]

After 100 pages I surrendered to the fact that I couldn't connect.

[Rob Anderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Completely whiffed on this one. Searching for something different, I found a GQ article entitled 21 Brilliant Books You've Never Heard Of. This book was recommended by John Jeremiah Sullivan. Sounded interesting. Car crash at the beginning of the book. Wife gets killed. Husband/Main character proceeds to act more than a bit off. Hmmm. Purgatory, right? Wow, kind of sucks. Not until 2/3rds of the way through the book did I realize the purgatory was literal!!! The character was passing through the seven terraces of purgatory (the seven deadly sins) to reach paradise. The chapter titles from the Italian for each of the sins, and I neglected to translate them until I got to the fifth chapter. Thing is, if it had been really compelling, I probably would have gone back and reread it, but I was not so moved. The Purgatorian seemed like he was concussed throughout. PTSD and the afterlife kind of makes sense, but it was necessarily gripping to me as the reader. The ending touched a nerve, but also ripped the scab off a lingering death anxiety that strikes me about every six months or so.

[Lori Capps · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have conflicting feelings after reading this book. It is organized into 7 parts with 7 chapters comprising each part. For the first 2-3 parts, I felt very disenchanted. The reviews plastered all over the front and back cover of the book had me thinking I was going into something that would blow my mind, and it just wasn't. There are some things that happen very early on, character responses and actions and internal dialogue, that tip the reader off to the fact that there will most likely be a twist. We understand right away that our narrator is probably unreliable. So fine. But where I really find my conflict in rating this book is the writing style. Once it became clear to me what the story was really about, I wanted to like the waxing-poetic, pseudo-philosophical nature of our protagonist, but I found myself continually rolling my eyes. It wasn't until the final section's final chapters that I really started to see the painful poetry in the writing.

I waffled between 2 and 3 stars and finally settled on 2. I wanted to like this book more. It definitely has something.

[Ariana Razavi · Rating 5 out of 5]

somehow unlike anything i’ve ever read

[Nathan Oates · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a strange, oddly beautiful book about a man who goes in search of his wife after she disappears at a New Jersey rest-stop. The tone and style are muted in a deeply existential way, all of which is explained as the novel unfolds during his cross-country road trip. The writing is both muted and enchanting and is gripping even as he shuttles around aimlessly (or nearly aimlessly). It is a novel like no other I've read (which is a rare event).

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic road story where the map of the world he travels through as he searches for his kidnapped wife comes to meet the map of his inner mind...sounds heavy, but isn't...mostly. I found the pages turned themselves and it wasn't until really close to the end that I worked out what was really going on.

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is trying to be clever but unfortunately I guessed where it was going from fairly early on. Too clever for its own good in my opinion. Pointless.

[Martine Henry · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wouldn't recommend this book if you're already feeling a little low

[Rhonda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not even read this whole book. Like most, I figured out what was going on early, so when I got bored with it, I skipped to the end. I did not find it to be journey of any kind at all.

[Michael Kuehn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beckett-lite is how I would describe AMERICAN PURGATORIO. Somewhat similar in tone to Beckett’s MOLLOY, but lacking the philosophical depth and real existential angst, Haskell’s quest tale, while entertaining, is sadly a bit predictable. In the opening paragraphs, the narrator and protagonist of the tale, Jack, walks from a gas station convenience store, snacks in hand, to find his wife and car missing. It’s a simple enough set up for a quest, a road story: find his wife. Was she kidnapped? Car jacked? Did she voluntarily leave him stranded? But we soon realize that there is nothing ordinary here.

It’s not long before we are led to question the reliability of our narrator. He seems detached from reality, and obsesses over his inner life.

Thank God for anger, I thought. Although I didn’t know what it was protecting me from exactly, I could tell it was giving me a chance to feel something other than loss. In that sense it was good, if not necessarily pleasant. Compared with loss or sorrow, anger was a balm, and rather than let it go, I wanted to perpetuate it. [52]

Jack goes on a seemingly aimless journey across the country looking for Anne, along the way indulging in the Seven Deadly Sins, however obliquely.

Through Jack’s inner dialogue, Haskell separates the reader as well from reality. Jack’s detachment becomes our detachment.

Despite its shortcoming, I enjoyed AMERICAN PURGATORIO. While having a pretty good idea where the novel was headed, I nevertheless wanted to see how the author was going to take me there. It’s a quick read at 240 pages.

UPDATE: I rarely do this, but after thinking about this book for the past few days, I’ve reconsidered. AMERICAN PURGATORIO is constructed around a gimmick, a horror/mystery trope, which would be recognizable to any Twilight Zone fan. 2 out of 5 Goodread stars. It’s okay.

[Tristan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disagree with the low reviews this was pseudo-philosophical pandering. The whole point—in my opinion—is that there is no meaning, just a series of failed attempts to make some. There was no surface-level popcorn Mitch albom message.

I think one of the last lines perfectly sums up what Haskell was trying to communicate most of all: it all happens and then it’s gone. The love, pain, turbulence, the fighting and resigning in between it all. Jack’s processing of grief is an out of body experience, pretty consistent with every event that follows the internally external & existential search for something, anything, to ground the sudden chaos of losing his wife without closure. Even when he was starting to realize Anne was dead the whole time, the way Haskell wrote jack’s initial silently tortured reaction to her leaving made me think she just drove off. Was it really all jack’s inner psyche about Anne, or was it anne the whole time narrating jack’s self-discovery of both their deaths?

There is no final Aristotelian logic to make sense of the tragedy, no confrontation with their mutually shared finitude, but a pure reconciliation with the truth. It just was, is, and was again. It all ends the same anyhow. Just so fundamentally human.

Salute.

[Thurston Hunger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Less a case of untrustworthy narrator and more a game of sorts played over the course of this book.

For me, knowing less as was the case early on, made for a more compelling read. As the fog lifts, the tale and title resolve...and the trick is over. Please place a penny over each of your eyes to pay the piper.

Half-way through I will say I was hoping this was a convoluted story about divorce, just crumpled up like a coffee cup at a gas station quick-stop. Instead, I suppose it is a meditation on shock (and spoilers death) and how the mind may travel in those last fleeting moments before consciousness evaporates.

There was a kindness of strangers in the afterlife, that felt like a tell to the trick. Americans are not that nice. And apparently the sex drive is right there sparking with those last fizzling neurons, I guess those post-mortal-coil near-coital experiences (and one bad blowjob) are what had me hoping this was just a lonely man ricocheting from divorce.

Alas no, and we get a stumble-bum Polino as Paul, and the Pacific Ocean as the Pearly Gates?

[Leif Quinlan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not quite "meh..." but not more than a whisper above. This book registered for me - if forced to categorize - as a too-long by 1/3, meandering take on the purgatory of non-acceptance of disappointing circumstances. If that seems harsh, it's because I couldn't even detect an attempt from Haskell to connect me emotionally to either the story or any of the characters. The main character was intentionally hollow and the supporting characters ranged from frustratingly interesting (most if not all of the female characters - frustrating because they were interesting to the reader but apparently not enough to the writer to warrant much depth) to annoyingly present (his homeless "friend"). I found the narrative idea of this novel stimulating but wasn't ever able to connect to any kind of narrative structure or progress. Things seemed to happen for about 250 pages and then it stopped
Not awful but I can't think of a reader whom I'd recommend it to

[Paul Picillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I'm from Chicago originally. I went to New York, married a girl named Anne, and was in the middle of living happily ever after when something happened."

So begins John Haskell's mesmerizing first novel, American Purgatorio, the story of a happily married man who discovers, as he walks out of a convenience store, that his life has suddenly vanished. In cool, precise prose, written as both a detective story and a meditation on the seven deadly sins, Haskell tells a story that is by turns tragic and comic, compassionate and gripping.

From the brownstones of New York City to the sandy beaches of Southern California, American Purgatorio follows the journey of a man whose object of desire is both heartbreaking and ephemeral. It confirms Haskell's reputation as one of our most intriguing new writers, "one of those rare authors who makes language seem limitless in its possibilities.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is simply a weird book. Please don't read too many reviews because there are spoilers that will ruin it for you; they did for me. However, carefully read the first chapter for the info you need to understand the rest of the book. The title should clue you in, as well. Some might characterize this book as a modern version of Dante's Divine Comedy, the Purgatorio section. It is an interesting read. I upgraded my rating from 3 to 4 because I think the novel's concept is unique. I feel that the author captured and conveyed to the reader the frustration and confusion that Jack was feeling due to his wife Anne's disappearance. Finally, he carried the book to the logical conclusion, but I think I would have felt more relief and joy, which was not conveyed in the ending thus my 4 rating. The journey and philosophical discussion accompanying the story were very thought-provoking. Also, I think the chapter headings would have been more impactful and illuminating in English.

[Chris Browning · Rating 2 out of 5]

People seem to either adore or hate this one, and I was closer to the latter I’m afraid. For what’s clearly meant to be an existentialist parable of sorts using the trappings of The Vanishing to propel itself, it feels remarkably like a not untalented writer trying to create something in a genre they’re not comfortable with. Sometimes this can result in magic, but this feels like someone trying to write something that’s delicate and strange but instead feels tentative and derivative. I knew exactly where it was going from quite early on and it never surprised me, never wrong footed me, never made me gasp at something new. No, it just feels like someone who’s read some Paul Auster and thinks he might have a crack at something similarly opaque

[Chris Trefry · Rating 3 out of 5]

John has a very interesting writing style. One thing he does very well is describe emotions and feelings, I found myself relating to the feelings that he went in depth on throughout the book and that gave me a good connection to the main character. The odd part is all of the tangent stories that pop up throughout the story line that seem to have no added benefit to building the big picture. I did enjoy the way that John waits until the last chapter to slowly reveal the answer to the mysterious situation that happens at the gas station with Anne.

[Brad Loveall · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is very well written. John Haskell is a good writer. The story itself ranges from interesting to dull and then, toward the end when everything comes together, almost great. But even though the book is to a large extent redeemed in the end, most of the book is fairly dull and barely interesting enough to sustain the reader’s attention. The book is probably better than three stars but it’s hard to reward a book that is this boring to read anything more than three stars even when it comes together nicely in the end.

[Renny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Walking

This story is very deep. It’s a journey told in a way so that it is felt existentially as the impending reality takes form within as if dreaming… only to be dashed rudely and suddenly awake. As a gentleman named Glen wrote in his review a number of years back, …”we have overwhelming moments of breakdown pushed right up against moments of bliss, of near-transcendence, coupled with terrible despair “… it is not a tale for everyone… in a lot of ways the experience of reading this book took me back to when I was a teenager 14-15 and reading a book by Dante Alighieri …

[Kristy · Rating 5 out of 5]

By the time I came near the end, I was crying so hard I had to put the book down for a moment. It's best not to say too much of the plot, that such an overdone gimmick in fiction can be done in such a unique and poetic almost spiritual way is quite a feat. A quiet masterpiece, odd and strange and beautiful and heartbreaking.