Starred review from March 31, 2008
Told from two perspectives that are at once nearly polar and intimately linked, this astounding debut captures an air of the fantastical while presenting one family's heartfelt battle with Alzheimer's. Seth Waller is a 15-year-old Austin, Tex., science nerd determined to discover the reason behind his mother's recent mental breakdown. Abel Haggard, living on his family farm just past the Dallas suburbs, is an aging recluse roiled by memories of his one true love: Mae, his brother Paul's wife. The two had a torrid affair while Paul served in Korea, forcing Mae to conceal the paternity of her baby when she became pregnant. Both Seth and Abel speak of a fantasy land named Isidora, which exists outside of our physical world, but which becomes a common thread in piecing this delicately woven story together. Each character is a product of a different time and place, but as Seth delves deeper into his scientific investigation and Abel's troubled life is further revealed, the two stories meet in an emotional and memorable climax. Block displays an innate gift for developing believable characters each with his own distinct voice. The result is a story that's compulsive and transporting.
August 25, 2008
Patrick Lawlor reads the precocious Block’s first novel with two markedly different voices for its two protagonists. The hunchbacked, memory-obsessed Abel Haggard is given a broad Southern accent that remains remarkably precise, considering its exaggerated pitch, and Seth Waller, the teenager trapped in an unhappy family, in search of an explanation for his mother’s mysterious illness, receives a much flatter, less remarkable, even reading. Lawlor’s technique swiftly and easily divides the book’s two halves, but his Abel rapidly grows painful to listen to as he is too exaggerated to be much more than a stereotype. Sounding neither convincing nor mellifluous, Lawlor’s Abel holds back this otherwise solid audiobook. A Random House hardcover (Reviews, Feb. 4).