RaveThe Guardian (UK)To avoid plot spoiling, let me say that what we assume is a two-hander crime novel swells with plenitude into an emotionally crushing panorama of two friends gone wildly astray, punished by regret but with their grim solidarity intact – so far. This is not a journey devoid of dark humour; there are back-breaking moments of mirth, as well as real madness and love ... [a] devastatingly vivid portrayal of serious crime and its real consequences ... Barry...is a clairvoyant narrator of the male psyche and a consistent lyrical visionary. The prose is a caress, rolling out in swift, spaced paragraphs, a telegraphese of fleeting consciousness ... Barry’s sensibility is eerie; he is attuned to spirits, to malevolent presences, the psychic tundra around us. But what distinguishes this book beyond its humour, terror and beauty of description is its moral perception. For this is no liberal forgiveness tract for naughty boys: it is a plunging spiritual immersion into the parlous souls of wrongful men.
Karl Marlantes
MixedThe Guardian (UK)The novel is a stalwart refresher on how tough life must have been when to post two letters on union business cost more than a week’s wages ... The book’s flaw is not the earnestness of its political story, but its narration. From Robert Graves to Ernst Jünger, James Salter to Michael Herr to Marlantes himself, the horror and fear of combat electrifies the simplest prose with huge tension and brutal significance. In Deep River, little of that gripping intensity is present; extensive sections of a long book feel perfunctory. Marlantes writes almost wholly in accessible, unchallenging prose, pretty much stripped of description ... Without the energy and anticipation of a combat scenario behind it, it only has the exhaustive agenda of spelling out every significant event that happens to the Koski siblings. Chapters lack dramatic tension ... There is an accumulating sense of documentary-like facts being adumbrated and ticked off, qualified by the helpful dates on which they occurred. Readers are told lots of dry information, rather than being permitted to experience these facts through the story, so we get plain, clunky exposition ... The logging sequences contain fascinating detail and a lovely set piece...Marlantes is quite capable of wonderful stuff like this. However, logging is already a rich fictional mini-genre ... We learn and grow from the novel, and many will embrace its long-term company and businesslike storytelling. Through girth and plenitude, hefty books often attempt to grab status. Marlantes is far too sincere a writer to be accused of that; yet I believe a shorter book might have given this story so much more power.
