Sundown, Yellow Moon / Larry Watson - 2**

[Book Concierge]

Sundown, Yellow Moon – Larry Watson
2**

From the book jacket: On an icy day in January 1961, in Bismark, North Dakota, a sixteen-year-old boy walks home from high school with his best friend, Gene. The sudden sound of sirens startles and excites them, but they don’t have long to wonder what the sound could mean. Soon after seeing police cars parked on their street, they boys learn the shocking truth; hours before Gene’s father, Raymond Stoddard, walked calmly and purposefully into the state capitol and shot to death a charismatic state senator. Raymond then drove home and hanged himself in his garage.

My reactions:
Watson writes in the first person, making this a very introspective story. The narrator is never named, though we learn that he grows up to become a writer, and some of his stories are interspersed throughout the novel. It’s clear that this event, and particularly the mystery of WHY, will haunt him, and give him material for his work for years to come.

But the narrator’s inability to let go of the murder / suicide, and his inability to connect with the people around him – his parents, his best friend, his girlfriend, etc – makes the entire novel read like an oddly unemotional third-person account. I never connected with the narrator or any of the other characters, and was left feeling “is that all?”

I’ve read several of Watson’s other books and am a fan of his writing, but this was clearly not his best work.


LINK to my review