Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Mar 2009
240 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Inspired by a true story and told through the startlingly sincere voice of a young narrator, Caroline, Peter Rock's My Abandonment is a riveting journey into life at the margins, and a mesmerizing tale of survival and hope.
A thirteen-year-old girl and her father live in Forest Park, the enormous nature preserve in Portland, Oregon. There they inhabit an elaborate cave shelter, bathe in a nearby creek, store perishables at the water's edge, use a makeshift septic system, tend a garden, even keep a library of sorts. Once a week, they go to the city to buy groceries and otherwise merge with the civilized world. But one small mistake allows a backcountry jogger to discover them, which derails their entire existence, ultimately provoking a deeper flight.
BookBrowse Review - Kim Kovacs
In My Abandonment, author Peter Rock makes some good points about homelessness and brings readers' attention to how American society treats those who don't wish to conform to accepted standards of behavior. It's a fast-paced novel that many will enjoy reading. Its flaws, however, are difficult to overlook. The book is marketed as "based on a true story," but readers should be forewarned that only the first half of the book bears any semblance to fact, and even then only marginally. The second half of the novel is entirely the product of the author's imagination, and the situations he devises for his characters make little sense in the context of the rest of the novel. In some cases, events depicted are too preposterous to be even remotely believable. Finally, the voice of the book's narrator, thirteen-year-old Caroline, is too immature and lacks dimension; the story consequently remains unconvincing overall.
Other Reviews
"It is an utterly entrancing book, a bow to Thoreau and a nod to the detective story. Every step of this narrative, despite providing more questions than answers, rings true." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. A compelling read; recommended for all fiction collections." - Library Journal.
"An electrically charged, bone-deep and tender tale of loss and partial redemption. Surreal, haunting, elegiac." - James Ellroy.
"This beautiful, strange novel takes us into the foreign country where those called homeless are at home, the city is wilderness, and the greater wilderness lies beyond. Fascinating and moving, it tells with great tenderness how human love goes wrong." - Ursula K. Le Guin.
This information about My Abandonment was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Norah Hoover
Peter Rock was born and raised in Salt Lake City. His most recent book is Spells, a novel-within-photographs that is a collaboration with five photographers and concerns shadows and bodies, the living and the dead, talking animals and all manner of shape-shifting. He is also the author of the novels Klickitat, The Shelter Cycle, My Abandonment, The Bewildered, The Ambidextrist, Carnival Wolves and This Is the Place, and a story collection, The Unsettling.
Rock attended Deep Springs College, received a BA in English from Yale University, and held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. He has taught fiction at the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Deep Springs College, and in the MFA program at San Francisco State University. His stories and freelance writing have both ...
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
