- Paperback: 464 pages
- Publisher: Picador (13 Aug 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330376993
- ISBN-13: 978-0330376990
- Product Dimensions: 21 x 13.6 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,665,152 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Road Home
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
With his 1988 novel, Dalva, Jim Harrison commenced an epic of the American Midwest--or more specifically, the Nebraska sand hills. In The Road Home his eponymous heroine returns in search of the son she abandoned 30 years before, only to find herself more deeply enmeshed than ever in the coils of the family romance. (Quite literally, by the way: the father of Dalva's son was her half-brother.) Now, a decade later, Harrison continues her story in The Road Home. Ranging over an entire century, this second installment encompasses both Dalva's ancestry and her valedictory impulses in the face of death, circa 1987.
As he did in the earlier book, the author passes the narrative baton from one character to another. There are five highly individual voices at work, including not only Dalva's own but that of her grandfather, mother, and son. This makes for a dense, Rashomon-like structure, in which events are revisited by one generation after another and truth is a relative thing--in every sense of the word. Harrison leavens this spiralling saga with splendid passages about everything from the Lakota Sioux to bird hunting, from the complexities of art to the simplicities of the wandering life: "There's a sweet, vaguely scary feeling in disappearance," notes Dalva's son, Nelse. And as always, the author can convey both the surprising beauty of a landscape and an almost suffocating sense of its abundance. "It is neither more nor less endurable in May," says Dalva of the lilac-encircled family cemetery, "when it is enshrouded by the heavy-scented purple and white flowers, a smell that on warm evenings is so dense as to be almost visible....The sound of the crickets arrived one by one until they were a chorus, and if you walked down the gravel road toward the Niobrara the frogs from the lower, marshy areas were so loud as to be barely endurable." --Bob Brandeis, Amazon.com --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"San Diego Star-Tribune" Harrison gives us characters with heart and soul; keen-eyed and rarely sentimental, they are the sorts of people we'd like to be, and so our identification is immediate.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
It is easy to forget that in the main we die only seven times more slowly than our dogs. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
It is easy to forget that in the main we die only seven times more slowly than our dogs. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Hardcover
Reading The Road Home flying over Nebraska, turning the last page in South Dakota added to my enjoyment. Perhas as a consequence I felt it one of the finest books I have read. Never having read any other Jim Harrison the sense of place, of family and history elegantly expressed in interwoven perspectives resonated with me and is with me still. So much so that I am now on Amazon looking for another of his books.
Format:Hardcover
Each character is the same...a dream pondering glutton. i've loved all of harrion's previous novels. but i just could not believe his characterization of dalva. i could not believe this was a woman. harrison is in love with a character that can't exist...a woman who thinks and eats like him. utterly disappointing!
Format:Hardcover
Each character is the same...a dream pondering glutton. i've loved all of harrion's previous novels. but i just could not believe his characterization of dalva. i could not believe this was a woman. harrison is in love with a character that can't exist...a woman who thinks and eats like him. utterly disappointing!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
an appropriate sequel to dalva, provides closure.
a tasteful revisit to characters from dalva. it was good to see the personality of nelse fleshed out, from the skeleton supplied in the former work. Read more
Published on 6 Sep 1999
Skip The Road Home and read Dalva
I've been a fan of Harrison since I read 'Legends of the Fall' in Esquire back in the 70's, so it was with great anticipation that I picked up this, his first novel in a decade... Read more
Published on 14 July 1999
The first half of the novel is great; the second half lags.
The basic narrative trajectory of the novel centers on Nelse, the patriarch's great grandson who was expelled from the family (given up for adoption at birth), and his slow... Read more
Published on 22 April 1999
Sloooowww Going
I'm a very big fan of Jim Harrison's fiction, having read and thoroughly enjoyed almost everything he's written. Read more
Published on 24 Mar 1999
Its about coming to terms with his life
Its clearly evident the Jim Harrison is preparing for something. What that is only he knows. After reading some of the other reviews I think people are missing the depth that he... Read more
Published on 21 Mar 1999
Another forward step in the growth of Harrison's stature.
The Road Home demonstrates the growing strength of Jim Harrison's fictional vision. Already a modern master, a veteran with several fascinating books behind him, this book is... Read more
Published on 14 Mar 1999
Dark and Depressing tale of a rich Nebraska Family.
Harrison is a great writer, but this story about a rich north central Nebraska family who have sabotaged themselves with their bad moral and ethical choices is dark and... Read more
Published on 28 Feb 1999
Wish I could say I loved it
I really wanted to love this book. I enjoyed John Wesley's section very much...his bits of wisdom, humor, and twists of his personality. Read more
Published on 16 Feb 1999
A true american author
It's the first book of Jim Harrison which I read; I think that I found the spirit of the american people from the middle west. I keep Paul Auster for the East !
Published on 9 Feb 1999
Read this book
If you want a book that is well-crafted, built on strong, detailed, complex, and believable characters, and hooks you in from chapter one, read The Road Home by Jim Harrison. Read more
Published on 4 Feb 1999
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