Asian wisdom traditions and an Emersonian reverence for what can be learned from nature have always suffused Duncan’s work, but in Sun House they are front and center on nearly every page.
Sun House may beguile some armchair Montanans — perhaps some real ones as well ... But even the right-brained and the right-thinking may resist its preachiness ... Too often, this earnestness — you might call it writy-ness — makes a wish-dream of renewal feel like an epic snoozer.
Though of Michener length, the story is talky and without much action; Duncan writes page after page to describe even the smallest incidents, as with his long and quite shattering disquisition on the death of a beloved dog. Yet that talk, arch and bookish... will prove captivating to those who enjoy novels of ideas ... For all its excesses, a book by a first-rate writer and one to be savored.
