By the close of Part 1 of Paul Yoon’s wonderful new novel, Etna, I was weeping freely. I’m not sure anyone needs to hear about the puddle I was in by novel’s end ... Devastating and gorgeous.
This one is special. Paul Yoon's slim, devastating novel, Etna, is in a category of its own — a category that contains adjectives like 'profound,' and 'uncanny' ... The power of Etna rests in the authenticity of its canine narrator's voice — a dog conscripted into an unnamed war in an unnamed country. From the novel's very first page, Etna's voice is somber and poetic in its simplicity ... Extraordinary.
For all its compactness, Etna has the shape of an epic ... Stands out among Yoon’s work ... This is, at times, a wrenching novel, strewn with broken bodies, but its atrocities never overwhelm its faith in creaturely communion, and in grief and longing that clarify, rather than obscure, one’s desires and selfhood.
A novel that aspires to the effervescence of poetry even as it limns an all-encompassing war ... A love story as much as a war story, one that gets more desolate as more people get blown apart.
Magnificent ... Yoon crafts yet another literary miracle, gorgeous in spare prose and dense with wrenching empathy on pages that may become saturated with tears. Amid today’s exhausted desensitization, Yoon gives readers an antidote of pure emotion.
Exciting yet melancholy ... A propulsive narrative of unrelenting sadness may sound oxymoronic, but that's the conjurer's trick Yoon pulls off. The ability to return home after tragic events sometimes requires a redefinition of home, as Etna and his compatriots discover in this elegant work.
An engrossing, deeply moving parable about the evils of war, with a canine protagonist who embodies humanity at its best ... Etna is an engaging narrator—observant, compassionate and, if anything, possessing a tendency toward understatement ... By the time the novel reaches its final page, it would be surprising if there are any readers who aren’t rooting for Etna to succeed in his quest ... His persistence in attempting to find peace and sanity in an insane world is nothing short of inspirational.
Not only does Yoon pull off a fresh take on well-worn Homeric themes and convincingly capture a dog’s perspective, but he offers subtle and resonant insights on the nature of faith, which might not always provide salvation but can be enough to keep people (and dogs) going. The author has outdone himself.
