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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Aug 2004, 272 pages
Paperback:
Aug 2005, 272 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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From the book jacket:
Set in the high-country of Wyoming, this is a
riveting tale of hard-won friendship, old
wounds, fresh pain and love lost and found.
Comment: An Unfinished Life is
somewhat similar in style to Kent Haruf's Plainsong
- but grittier. Jean Gilkyson hasn't been
home to Wyoming for ten years, since her husband
died in a car accident; she was driving
and her father-in-law, Einar, has never forgiven
her. However, now she's out of money and
options. Leaving her abusive boyfriend, Roy, she
and her nine-year-old daughter, Griff, escape to
the only place left to them, her father-in-law's
house in Ishawooa, Wyoming, where Griff meets
the grandfather she didn't know she had, and
Jean's father-in-law meets the granddaughter he
didn't know he had. The story is told from five
different viewpoints: Griff, Einar, Jean, Roy,
and Einar's old war buddy and best friend,
Mitch, who is pivotal in breaking down the
barriers between the generations, allowing the
shoots of forgiveness a chance to grow.
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'.
'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).' - PW.
'Each word counts for more than it says in
this achingly beautiful story of courage and
endurance.' - Booklist.
This review
first ran in the August 17, 2005
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