Garner

Author: Kristin Allio
Date Finished: 1/29/06

This book was the winter Read This! selection of the Litblog Co-op. I was lucky enough to find a copy on the 7 day rack at the local library (in fact, I found copies of four of the five contenders for winter Read This!--is someone at the library wired into the LBC?) and took it home among a rather large pile of books I'd been wanting to read, but could never remember to pick up in the three minutes I have to select books between the end of Story Time and the mad dash to the library's toy room.

Anyway. I read the first LBC Read This! selection, Case Histories and liked it, and got about a third of the way through the second selection, The Angel of Forgetfulness, before deciding that life is just too short. Garner almost met the same fate as The Angel of Forgetfulness, because the opening scenes gave me a dizzying sense of "What's going on here?" This isn't a sense that I have much patience with as a reader. But after putting it aside for a couple of days, I picked it back up, thinking I'd better get to it if I was going to get it back before the shortened due date.

It turns out that the uncertainty of the first few pages continues throughout the novel. The story is of a New Hampshire farming community in 1925; people are losing money on agricultural pursuits and one family takes in boarders from the city for the summer. Their daughter, Frances, is found dead in a stream. What happened? Each narrator has his or her own take, suggesting a range of events from tragic love story to a malicious murder. This story was not a quick fun read; instead, it was a quick read that kept me on my toes as I compared one section to another, looking for a coherent story of what truly happened. And to be honest, I'm not entirely sure the novel answered the question, as I thought the ending ambiguous. This is the kind of book that I read reluctantly, but that I think about often. A little challenge to the brain along with an amazing sense of life in rural New Hampshire equaled a fine way for me to spend a few January hours.