An Unfinished Life: Summary and book reviews of An Unfinished Life by Mark Spragg, plus links to an excerpt from An Unfinished Life and a biography of Mark Spragg.
An Unfinished Life
by Mark Spragg
Hardcover: Aug 2004,
272 pages.
Paperback: Aug 2005,
272 pages.
"One of the truest and most original new voices in American letters," as Kent Haruf has written, Mark Spragg now tells the story of a complex, prodigal homecoming.
Jean Gilkyson is floundering in a trailer house in Iowa with yet another brutal boyfriend when she realizes this kind of life has got to stop, especially for the sake of her daughter, Griff. But the only place they can run to is Ishawooa, Wyoming, where Jean's loved ones are dead and her father-in-law, the only person who could take them in, wishes that she was too. For a decade, Einar Gilkyson has blamed her for the accident that took his son's life, and he has chosen to go on living himself largely because his oldest friend couldn't otherwise survive. They've been bound together like brothers since the Korean War and now face old age on a faltering ranch, their intimacy even more acute after Mitch was horribly crippled while Einar helplessly watched.
Of course, ten-year-old Griff knows none of this–only that her father is dead and her mother has bad taste in men. But once she encounters this grandfather she'd never heard about, and the black cowboy confined to the bunkhouse, with irrepressible courage and great spunk she attempts to turn grievous loss, wrath, and recrimination–to which she's naturally the most vulnerable–toward reconciliation and love.
Immediately compelling and constantly surprising, rich in character, landscape, and compassion, An Unfinished Life shows a novelist of extraordinary talents in the fullness of his powers.
Somewhat similar in style to Kent Haruf's Plainsong - but grittier. The voice of the abusive boyfriend, Roy, is particularly convincing. In the interview that you can read at BookBrowse, Spragg says that the most difficult part of the book was to convey Roy's voice accurately, particularly 'his sense of being misunderstood, his burning righteousness and his sentimentality of violence'. (Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Publishers Weekly
An old rancher reluctantly takes in his daughter-in-law and granddaughter in this moving and well-crafted, if rather derivative, second novel by Spragg (The Fruit of Stone).
Booklist - Bill Ott
Starred Review. Spragg completes a sparkling hat trick with his second novel, following his equally fine debut, The Fruit of Stone (a Booklist Top 10 First Novel in 2002), and his much-acclaimed memoir Where Rivers Change Direction (1999)....Each word counts for more than it says in this achingly beautiful story of courage and endurance. Spragg belongs in the same category with such tough-and-tender western writers as William Kittredge, Ivan Doig, and Larry Watson.
Library Journal - Bette-Le Fox
Highly recommended for general fiction collections.
Pam Houston
Mark Spragg invents characters that are as richly drawn and lovingly rendered as the landscape in which he sets them down. An Unfinished Life is honest, engaged, deeply satisfying, and full of an uncanny grace that resides both in the beauty of the language and in these valuable lives.
William Kittredge
Wyoming, its winds and distances, never quits. What a pleasure it is to watch a few of its hard-forged citizens stay with the task of forgiving, cherishing and caring for one another. Mark Spragg has got the territory dead right in this moving testimony to seeing things through.
Jeffrey Lent
Mark Spragg's An Unfinished Life is a tremendously accomplished, elegantly written and paced tale of love and loss, the bonds of grief and blood, and the complex turnings of the human heart. This is a heartbreaking yet uplifting novel that is most deeply satisfying. These characters, these people, will remain with me a long, long time.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Brooke I'm moving to Wyoming My local library highlighted An Unfinished Life as an appropriate bookclub selection and I'm glad they brought it to my attention - I loved reading it. Mark Spragg draws a full and engaging picture of several lives intersecting with vivid... Read More
Rated of 5
by Tara Nice read This was a nice read - not spectacular, just really nice. As I read it I felt as if I was part of this family. I enjoyed all of the characters, especially Griff, the young girl. I am very interested to see the movie version now.
Rated of 5
by RobbieL Where's Robert Duvall? I just finished reading "An Unfinished Life" and loved it. The characters were real and it was easy to identify with their emotions and the situations. The little girl, Griff, was wise beyond her years with very few child-like traits. She seemed... Read More
Rated of 5
by C. Hutt An Unfinished Life The cover caught my eye. Being a Wyoming native antlers are a part of my life.
Once I started reading the book I could not put it down. So many of the situations are familliar to me...not just the story line but the "local way of Ishawoa... Read More
Before
this book, Spragg published a memoir (Where
Rivers Change Direction, 1999) and
a novel, The
Fruit of Stone. The
movie of An Unfinished Life
(starring Robert Redford and Jennifer
Lopez) was originally due to be
released around Christmas 2004 but is
now scheduled for September this year.
Spragg and his wife worked
simultaneously on both projects - he
on the book and she on the screenplay.
The first volume in the Border Trilogy - the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
A magnificent love story, Cold Mountain is the tale of a wounded Confederate soldier, Inman, who walks away from the ravages of the war and back home to his pre-war sweetheart.
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(337 words).
Publishers Weekly
Pam Houston
of 5
by Brooke
of 5
by Tara
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