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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jun 2015, 272 pages
Paperback:
Jul 2016, 272 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Darcie R.J. Abbene
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An utterly stunning novel of love, loss, the insidious nature of secrets, and the transformative power of words. I Saw a Man fulfills the promise of Owen Sheers's acclaimed novel, Resistance.
An utterly stunning novel of love, loss, the insidious nature of secrets, and the enduring power of words. I Saw a Man fulfills the promise of Owen Sheers's acclaimed novel, Resistance.
When journalist Caroline Marshall fails to return from assignment in Pakistan, her grief-stricken husband, Michael, leaves their cottage in Wales and returns to London where he quickly develops a friendship with his neighbors, Josh and Samantha Nelson, and their two young daughters. Michael's friendship with the Nelsons marks the beginning of a long healing process, until a terrible accident adds yet more grief, and the burden of a shattering secret, to Michael's life. How will Michael bear this weight as he navigates his persistent doubts on the path to attempted redemption? The answer, revealed with nerve-wracking suspense, is eloquent, resonant, and completely unforgettable.
One
The event that changed all of their lives happened on a Saturday afternoon in June, just minutes after Michael Turner—thinking the Nelsons' house was empty—stepped through their back door. Although it was early in the month, London was blistered under a heat wave. All along South Hill Drive windows hung open, the cars parked on either side hot to the touch, their seams ticking in the sun. A morning breeze had ebbed, leaving the sycamores lining the street motionless. The oaks and beeches on the surrounding Heath were also still. The heat wave was only a week old, but already the taller grass beyond the shade of these trees was bleaching blond.
Michael had found the Nelsons' back door unlocked and ajar. Resting his forearm against its frame, he'd leant in to the gap and called out for his neighbours.
"Josh? Samantha?"
There was no reply. The house absorbed his voice without an echo. He looked down at his old pair of deck shoes, their ...
Sheers’ writing is beautifully descriptive. He can masterfully paint the room around the reader so that, not only do we feel as if we are standing in it physically, but we also experience a sense of the emotional atmosphere of the room, whether it is the sense of apprehension, fear, discomfort or, conversely, the ease with which characters interact with each other...continued
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(Reviewed by Darcie R.J. Abbene).
Matthew Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves
The stately prose and cool omniscience in I Saw A Man provide the perfect cover for the roiling sea of emotions under its surface. One of the book’s great strengths is how difficult it becomes to tell the good guys from the bad as the story progresses ... and the moral landscape grows ever murkier. Settled domesticity gives way to a quietly charged, Dostoyevskian psychic chaos whose outcomes are thrillingly uncertain.
After his wife's death in Owen Sheers novel I Saw a Man, Michael Turner moves from their home in Coed y Bryn in Wales to a flat in London owned by the very friend that informed him of Caroline's death. While he is reluctant to do much of anything after her death, he knows he must inch himself forward and the noncommittal renting of an apartment seems appropriate. Often folks are advised to spend time in nature to heal, and that is a benefit of this particular flat which is located on the edge of Hampstead Heath, an almost 800-acre public park in London.
The Heath and Hampstead Society of London calls the park the "Green lung of London" and wastes no time citing it as the magical inspiration for author C. S. Lewis's The ...
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