Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful but Flawed, 9 Jun 2005
Anthony Doerr's About Grace, is a difficult book to describe and to review. It is the story of David Winkler, an eccentric, Alaskan hydrologist who is gifted and cursed with premonitory dreams. The books shows us the impact of such a power and the life and choices that David is forced, and chooses, to take.The book is divided into six sections, each telling the story of a period of time in David's life. The major theme of which is a series of dreams concerning the death of his daughter Grace, the choices he makes because of these premonitions and the consequences of those decisions. The dreams are that Grace will die in his arms in a flood, so when the flood waters begin to rise he escapes to the Caribbean, hoping to save her by breaking the vision but risking the fact that she may die in the flood anyway. After 25 years of living in the Caribbean he returns to America to search for his daughter, assuming, that is, she even survived. Anthony Doerr is a talented writer, his descriptions are vivid, his character strange. There is no doubt that this is a beautiful book, however there is something somewhat disappointing about About Grace. Doerr's turn of phrase and descriptive style, although charming and awe inspiring in small doses, soon becomes distracting and draws the book out, making it overly long. Plot and characterisation are sacrificed for description of the vivid and the beautiful, which is no bad thing but leaves a book that the reader will either love or grow tired with rather rapidly. Anthony Doerr obviously has a great talent for writing, his style suits the short story perfectly, however for a novel of this length I would prefer he show an equal talent for story telling, with more character development and emotion. That said this is a beautiful written book and even if it will leave some readers disappointed, it will leave others amazed. Despite being one of the disappointed, I look forward to the next book by Anthony Doerr and hope that he has learnt from some of the flaws of this one.
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17 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Everything hewed to a rigidity of pattern, and of death", 28 Dec 2004
In this highly symbolical novel, author Anthony Doerr boldly poses metaphysical questions about life, death, the human condition, and the ties that inevitably bind families together. Doerr has a beautifully structured style, and the narrative of About Grace is full of some of the most spectacular imagery, but the meaning behind the tale is often shrouded in the abstract and the mysterious. Memory, dreams, water, and the inescapable lust for life form the thematic core of this novel as David Winkler, the often-embattled main protagonist of the story, voluntarily exiles himself far away from his family and the life his is familiar with. David has a terrible problem. A chronic sleepwalker and a gifted hydrologist, he dreams about things before they happen, and the dreams are often terrible portents to death and disaster. He dreams of a man getting hit by a bus, he dreams he's on an airplane, returning home after twenty-five years, and dreams he's on an island dreaming of the future. But when he dreams that he will inadvertently kill his daughter Grace, while trying to save her in a flood, he becomes obsessed with protecting her. He sees Grace suffocating in his arms and realizes that his dreams are ordained perhaps by chance, or choice, or the complexities of some unfathomably large pattern. Fearing Grace's death, Winkler leaves her and his wife Sandy behind and jumps on a ship that is headed to the Caribbean in an attempt to stop the dream from becoming reality. During his twenty-five year exile, David writes obsessive letters to Sandy begging to find out whether Grace is still alive, and is befriended by two Chilean exiles Felix and Soma, whose daughter Naaliyah comes to support him in unexpected and surprising ways. Winkler becomes a reclusive island hermit who is wracked by guilt at what he has done. He goes from being a confident weatherman with a family to a type of disparate lost soul, where he lives his days and nights struggling against sleep, time and guilt - existing only for a flicker of hope that his daughter is still alive. He ekes out a living doing trivial jobs, working on construction sites, and relying on the good-hearted generosity of others. Winkler eventually returns to the United States in search of redemption, forgiveness, and to find out whether Grace is still alive. The journey he embarks on takes him on an epic road trip across continental United States, to the blistery wintry darkness of northern Alaska, and back to Anchorage where his life journey started all those years earlier. Doerr cleverly likens Winker's experiences to the natural world. Winkler is a scientist obsessed with snowflakes and other forms of water, but he is also a man who is unmistakably human and frail. And like the snowflakes he studies, he is remarkably resilient to the world around him. David discovers that life is just like the ice crystals he studies - the basic design is so icily repeated and unerringly conforming. The filigreed blossoms, the microscopic stars have a ghastly inevitability; both the crystals and humans cannot escape their embedded blueprints. Whether he is describing the intricate arms of these snowflakes or the unending beauty of a tropical sunset, Doerr's powers of description are formidable and his ability to evoke the passions of the ever-changing natural world are unsurpassed. About Grace is a powerful story about family - "family is truth, struggle, retribution and time" - and also the ability to forgive. Through the power of redemption, David is able to better understand the meaning of life and more fully appreciate the beauty of the natural world that constantly encompasses us. Mike Leonard December 04.
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11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
descriptive but self indulgent, 2 Nov 2005
By A Customer
Anthony Doerr's, About Grace,is the story of David Winkler, an Alaskan hydrologist. He is subject to premonitions that,once past childhood, seem to be linked to his love for others; Sandy, Grace his daughter, and Naaliyah the daughter of his friends. Yet the gift is not consistent and neither is the novel.
What the premonitons provide is a tenuous suspense device and vague plot. When he leaves Grace as a baby, he believes that he is saving her life. The novel deals with his retreat to the Caribbean. After 25 years of living there as a kind of handyman for no apparent reason, he returns to America to try to find his daughter, unsure if she is alive or dead. Sadly, 200 pages into the book we really do not care if he finds her. Winkler is not a sufficiently interesting character on which to base a novel.
The plot fails to grip, the ideas are predictable and the characters seem mechanical and unrealistic expressing little emotion or self awareness. The problem is exacerbated by the minimal use of dialogue. In this novel few characters say more than 10 words at any one time and this becomes frustratingly incomprehensible. For example, although Winkler leaves flowers on Grace's doorstep for months, he never takes the opportunity to explain to her why he left despite her supposed rage at his desertion.
Towards the end of the novel, the relationship between Winkler, Herman and Christopher is more sensitively portrayed. However, this is too late.
The descriptions of water/ice and nature are minutely detailed and often beautiful but there is the frustrating sense that if they are intended to function symbolically,they fail. Perhaps, if they had been used more sparingly and consistently they could have added genuine depth and significance to a short novel. Instead, they become a series of long strings of self-indulgent descriptive prose with tiny events added occassionally for supposed interest. The book is far, far, too long and needed good editing, often a problem with a first novel.
I believe that Doerr could be a good short story writer using natural images to work at a symbolic level where they could genuinely supplement plot and character. However I will not hurry to read another of his novels.
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