reservation road by john burnham schwartz

I thought that the Schwartz got into the heads of the characters. This would have been fine but to mention more of the dated terms just made the novel confusing. The only thing that made the book even seem like the present was that someone was reading Dean Koontz and another person went to a Barnes and Noble.

This further dragged the reader into the past. Most people don’t refer to someone as in the war unless they were in World War 2. Some characters would wear seersucker suits and have habits that seemed pretty dated like the love of classical music or that someone’s father was once in the war. This shift from 50’s to present really confused me. I feel that the writer liked the time of the 50’s but wanted to be able to include some police procedural that came from the 90’s. The character’s each feel like they came from the 1950’s even thought the novel was supposed to be set in the 1990’s. They each tell their side of a story, their emotional baggage after a horrible accident. Schwartz tells this story in the voices of three characters: Ethan, Dwight and Grace. There was a major problem with the book, dealing with the timing of the novel. It was a silly mistake and after a little bit of confusion I continued on. I thought it was the book they made the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio about, Revolutionary Road. I picked this book because I thought it was something completely different. character-driven as it is, it reads like a thriller, swift and complete.'- The New York Times Book Review This is one of those rare-very rare-novels that you don't so much read as inhabit and that makes everyday life seem altogether mysterious.' - Entertainment Weekly 'Thrums with suspense and moral ambiguity. This is an astonishing tale of love and loss, rage and redemption, that is as suspenseful as it is emotionally compelling. As these two men's lives unravel, Reservation Road moves to its startling conclusion. Dwight, a man at once fleeing his crime and hoping to get caught, wrestles with overwhelming guilt and his sense of obligation to his son. Ethan, a respected professor of literature at a small New England college, is wracked by an obsession with revenge that threatens to tear his family apart. Two haunted men and their families are engulfed by the emotions surrounding an unexpected and horrendous death. A powerful and affecting novel.'- The New York TimesĪ tragic accident sets in motion a cycle of violence and retribution in John Burnham Schwartz's riveting novel Reservation Road. 'A dark and irresistible a heartbreaking thriller.'- Los Angeles Times

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

Reservation road by john burnham schwartz