An Unfinished Life

Rating:
Summary: Pass the Butter
Review: "An Unfinished Life" is the rather Bette Davis, 1940's weepy title of Mark Spragg's simple, sometimes compelling story of a, to say the least, dysfunctional family: the heart of which is a young girl Griff and her grandfather, Einar who are introduced to each other after Griff's mother Jean, makes a dash from her abusive lover Roy back to her hometown.
There's a bit of a" To Kill a Mockingbird" feel to Spragg's story as Griff takes the lead role, not only in the novel itself but also in bringing all the parties of this extended family together. She is also the catalyst for all the good that takes place.
Spragg's prose is straightforward and to the point and his story is good, particularly when he is dealing with the Mother, Jean, I think. It is obvious that Spragg loves these characters but he has a particular affinity for Jean: "Her (Jean's) face is bigger and brighter than she's ever shown Roy, or the sheriff or any man. It's like her mother's on fire and everybody else in the world's cold and in the dark, and her mother's there to make sure they get warm."
"An Unfinished Life" is warm and cozy and in parts like that above it burns with the fire of recognition and understanding of what makes us human. And for this it is worth your time and energy.


Rating:
Summary: what a book!
Review: At first I wasn't going to read this book as the jacket stated it involved yet another abused woman. I figured same story different characters. I was wrong. The author gave us the gift of Griff and her grandfather and a love they grow into. And Mitch loves Griff so much. I loved how the author told us about the relationship between Einor and Mitch and the bear. True, loyal friends to the end. Griff's life becomes the adventure every child should have when her mother finally leaves ole Roy the abuser. What a jerk, aren't they all? It is a hard to put down book, the author kept us wondering what would happen next. Excellent writing.

Rating:
Summary: Spare and unadorned, but uncommonly beautiful
Review: Every life is unfinished; there is never enough time to meet all of our goals, fulfill all of our potential, satisfy all of our yearnings. Each death is its own half-forgotten story, its incomplete symphony, its fragmentary first novel sitting on the shelf, yellowed papers curling up to the ceiling. To personalize things for a moment, it doesn't matter whether I die next Friday or three hundred years from now in the best hospital on Mars. My life will still be unfinished. There are a hundred reasons why. Four quick examples: I will never take the field for the Texas Rangers at Arlington Stadium; I will never get to sing in public; I will never discover a cure for any disease; and I will never manage to write as well as Mark Spragg.

It is not unfinished lives that Spragg is writing about here. It is not a what-if novel; the dead do not hang around like Marley's ghost, trying to do what was left undone in life. Instead, AN UNFINISHED LIFE is about the long-term effects of tragedy; how tragedy radiates through the years, sending out resonance frequencies that vibrate throughout the lost years, showing up now and again, repeating their patterns over and over. It is the long-ago death of Griff Gilkyson that concerns us here. We know nothing of him, practically, except that he was born, died young, and left a void in the hearts of his father, Einar Gilkyson, his wife Jean, and the daughter he never met. Ten years later, Jean and her daughter (also named Griff) return to Einar's remote Wyoming ranch, shaking off a Midwestern exile spent in trailer parks and women's shelters.

Spragg tells the story from a variety of shifting viewpoints --- something that you're expressly told not to do at writer's conferences, but something that you can do if you write as well as this author. It helps to have, as Spragg does, a knack for dry, spare dialogue and sharply delineated characters ---- whether those characters are vulnerable ten-year old girls, or lonesome ranchers, or abusive boyfriends. That's the obvious point to make; what is less obvious is that, unlike the other characters, the main character here --- the state of Wyoming itself --- doesn't get its own chapter, nor does it need one. In a way, AN UNFINISHED LIFE is about how the characters relate to the empty spaces and dusty roads of rural Wyoming as much as how they relate to one another.

Spragg's Wyoming is a place of wide vistas and long rides in pickup trucks that can be as confining and claustrophobic as your closet at home, depending on your options and opportunities. It is still a half-wild place. The big attraction in Ishawooa, Wyoming is the zoo, filled with local animals "with names and sad stories," from distressed sandhill cranes to captive rattlesnakes. The Wyoming landscape, it seems, is so stark and forbidding that even the native animals have problems adapting to it.

Spragg's writing, like the Wyoming landscape, is spare and unadorned, but it is also uncommonly beautiful in the right light, especially counterpointed with his use of direct, Laconic dialogue. Spragg can, and does here, make a driver's license interesting reading: "Jean Marie Gilkyson," it reads. "Donor. What hasn't she given away? Her pride, her body. She holds the laminated card at arm's length. Dreams, too, it goes without saying."

AN UNFINISHED LIFE takes place in an unfinished world, or maybe the finish just wears off the closer you get to the Rocky Mountains. It is a book about loss, of course, and suffering --- more than that, it is about how suffering is our inheritance and our right, "a burden, even sacred, for both man and beast." Though it is deeply steeped in Wyoming, Spragg's second novel speaks directly to us, with the transcendent clarity of carefully crafted prose, where we are and who we are amidst the pain of our everyday struggles and defeats.

My only gripe is with the title itself --- AN UNFINISHED LIFE, which is deeply unsatisfactory, for it is a tautology.

This is not a book for the timid, or anyone who would rather be reading THE DA VINCI CODE on their layover at the Cincinnati airport. AN UNFINISHED LIFE stands above the grief and pain of its ordinary characters and even its extraordinary landscape, for it is about those things that are higher than loss and death --- loyalty, and endurance, and, gratefully, love.

--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds, who recently completed his first novel, CHASING DIMAGGIO (http://www.txreviews.com/chasingdimaggio/).

Rating:
Summary: The search for the sense of Home and Family
Review: Griff, a precocious 9yo girl who is determined to force Jean, her mother, to grow up and take responsibility for herself, is the main focus of this book that starts with Griff pretty much forcing her mom to drive away from her last abusive boyfriend and head toward California. They only make it to Ishawooa, Wyoming, where Jean grew up and married Griffin, Griff's dad, who died in a car accident before Griff was born.
Einar, Griffin's angry old father (angry cuz he blames Jean for the death of his only son), reluctantly takes them in, and Jean begins working at the local restaurant.
Griff falls in love with the ranch, the old man, his Vietnam War buddy Mitch who's been nearly killed by a grizzly, and with the sense of permanence that she's been lacking all her life - and she's determined not to leave.
Good story-telling, good writing, good characters, good book.


Rating:
Summary: A Legacy of Love
Review: I've never written a book, but it sure seems that the voice of a child makes the most engaging narrative. In "An Unfinished Life," ten year old Griff is an extremely likeable young person. Her mother's choice of boyfriends has made Griff wise beyond her years, but at her core she is a sweet and unaffected child. Everyone in the book is charmed by Griff, and I'm sure most readers will be too.

The adults, even the story, revolve around Griff; her mother Jean and grandfather Einar only connect through Griff. The pretty Jean, unfortunately, comes across a hollow character known chiefly for her wanton ways. Crusty at first, Einar is a character who proves as likeable as young Griff.

The most memorable scenes in the book chart the relationship that blossoms between Griff and Einar, two generations previously lost to each other by a tragic death. At first Einar is unhappy having his daily routine disturbed, but after a few challenging early mornings Griff wins his respect. Endearingingly, Einar surveys another child about his favorite sandwich, and then stops off at the store to buy the ingredients to make a PBJ for his new granddaughter.

I never like to give the plot away when I review a book, so I will simply support my 4 star recommendation by saying that Griff and her grandfather are wonderful characters to meet. You'll find yourself rooting for their happiness.





Rating:
Summary: Still one of the West's best
Review: Mark Spragg remains one of the most evocative literary writers of the American West, even at a time when some very exciting new voices such as Pete Fromm and Marcus Stevens are rising. From his memoir, "Where Rivers Change Directions" to his novel "An Unfinished Life," he tells a story that is both richly visual and emotionally precise. A screenwriter-turned-author, Spragg "sees" his story unfold, and through his powerful language, so do we. "An Unfinished Life" spans both media in a poetic way, and a reader is strongly advised to read the book AND see the movie when it arrives.

Rating:
Summary: Old Men are the Real Sweethearts
Review: Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I love the characters in An Unfinished Life. Mark Spragg has nailed old men with regrets, a woman with a sordid past, and a young girl with hope.

Rating:
Summary: WELL DONE PROSE AND A GOOD STORY
Review: Mr. Spragg has given us a wonderful, simple story presented in a smooth style with delightful prose. I found it interesting that there was not one character in the book that I was unable to picture clearly in my mind as I read. This is a notable feat for such a short work. The author has taken a subject, a problem, which is all too common in our country today, and given it life and understanding, as far as we can understand such a thing as abuse. I had to agree with another reviewer, that we do see a bit of "To Kill a Mocking Bird" in this one, yet it is, at the same time, quite different. I was pleased that so much was presented through the eyes of a child. I also found the humor to be quite applicable when it was used. I was pleased to find that a movie is apparently to be made of this one and I do hope the makers of that movie do not screw it up, which is so often the case. All in all, I highly recommend this one.

Rating:
Summary: Hopes and regrets on a ranch in Wyoming . . .
Review: One of the finest books written about growing up in the West is Mark Spragg's memoir, "Where Rivers Change Direction." He's also a talented screenwriter whose "Everything That Rises" is a touching film about a rancher father and young son. So I've found myself expecting probably too much from his fiction. "The Fruit of Stone" and "An Unfinished Life" seem to lack the sparkling brilliance and deep truth of his earlier work, and I wish it wasn't so. When Spragg is good, he breaks your heart.

"An Unfinished Life" reads much like a film script. It moves along in the present tense and is largely visual, describing behavior and capturing dialogue, but often staying just on the surface and not getting to the emotional heart of a scene. The characters and situations are often a little too predictable; you feel that you've seen and heard them already somewhere else. Dedicated to author Kent Haruf ("Plainsong"), the book seems rather much inspired by that author's small-town characters of three generations. You keep wishing Spragg would just yield to his own vision, which if his memoir is any indication, has to be deeper, darker, more troubling, and powerful.

Having said all that, I won't discourage readers from enjoying many of the pleasures that are to be found in this novel. A master of quirky dialogue, Spragg writes several scenes, mostly between the two old men at the center of the story, full of quiet verbal sparring that makes their relationship spring to life. The tentative friendship between a young sheriff and a woman on the run from an abusive husband keeps us interested. And his journey into the mind of the husband who stalks her is thoroughly creepy and disturbing.

But for readers who don't know Spragg, I'd point them instead to his memoir, "Where Rivers Change Direction." It's the real thing.


Rating:
Summary: STANDING OVATION PERFORMANCES
Review: When listening to an audio book it often occurs to me that what I'm hearing merits the title "performance" rather than "reading." Such is surely the case with "An Unfinished Life." Seldom has a more stellar pair of voice actors come down the pike than Tony Amendola and Judith Marx. Their interaction is superb, bringing both pathos and joy to this story of reconciliation and strength.

Jean Gilkyson is in a tight. Following the accidental death of her husband she's been involved in one punishing relationship after another. Somehow, she needs to find refuge for herself and her 10-year-old daughter, Griff. But, where to go?

The only place of which she knows is a down at the heels ranch in Wyoming owned by her father-in-law, Elinar, who never wants to see her again. He blames Jean for his son's death, and isn't one to forgive or forget.

Nonetheless, Jean and Griff flee to the ranch to find Elinar older but not much wiser, caring for his best friend, Mitch, who was crippled in a losing battle with a grizzly bear. If ever two immovable forces confronted one another it's Jean and Elinar. Thus, it's up to Griff to try to penetrate the walls of distrust and recrimination that the years have built.

Listen to this touching story and be moved by the strength of the human spirit.

- Gail Cooke