Carry Me Across the Water : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Return to Form
Review: After the major disappointment of For Gods and Planets, Canin again displays a mastery of his craft in Carry Me Across the Water. What a pleasure to find a novel that can be comfortably read in a couple of days yet leaves a deep emotional impression. I disagree with the reviewer who complained about the form, which uses flashbacks and cuts between various scenes in the protagonist's life; there's nothing confusing about it, and it works beautifully. I do agree that Canin has brought to bear his skill as a short story writer in conveying the essence of a good novel without the tedium of endless descriptions and meandering plot lines. For those looking for a complex interweaving of many well-developed characters, look elsewhere; this is the story of one man's life, in which all other characters are supporting, existing only through the lens of his aging eyes in order to help us understand how he feels as he approaches the end of his life, and why. Those reviewers who found the man unsympathetic perhaps are just not as familiar with their own irritable side as they hopefully will be eventually. I found the portrait very true to my experience. Canin seems to do much better with older characters; his young people tend to be two-dimensional, but he has a wonderful grasp of the subtleties of the minds of people much older than he is himself.

After For Gods and Planets I wondered whether Canin was capable of writing a good novel. As I finished the last page of this one, I said out loud to myself, "A good book."

Rating:
Summary: Return to Form
Review: August Kleinman is a a man in his 70s who has fully experienced life, from his escape out of Germany as a child to his service in WWII to his lucrative career as a business entrepreneur. Now, his beloved wife has passed away, and Augie struggles with maintaining a relationship with his son and new grandson while also trying to come to terms with his guilt about past mistakes. Author Canin skillfully weaves stories of the past--Augie's experiences as a soldier in Japan, the progression of his marriage--with those of the present--namely, Augie's interactions with his remaining family and a return trip to Japan. Although the frequent changes in setting could have been disorienting, Canin keeps the reader grounded with use of simple yet enchanting language. Slowly but surely, the story of Augie's life enfolds, coming to a satisfying conclusion while still leaving the reader with questions about Augie's exact fate. Sweet without being overly sentimental, this is a short novel with a wide appeal.

Rating:
Summary: Clever yet disappointing
Review: Canin attended medical school and now teaches writing in Iowa. The resulting style is clear, pure, and academic. And little more. "Carry me across the water" offers glimpses of a man's life from several perspectives: fleeing Europe, fighting war in the Pacific, retiring in Boston, building a business in Pittsburgh, and visiting a grandson in New York. All these opportunities for depth, character, enrichment and color receive scant treatment in this very short novel, begging the author to add some insight. Each of these brief eras could merit a book. Instead, we have abbreviated, witty, colorful snapshots.

Rating:
Summary: Promising book from a promising writer
Review: Emperor of the Air is one of the best short stories I've read. I've read it over and over, and years ago I looked everywhere to find the new Ethan Canin story. But by the time I got to Blue River, I started to feel like Canin was interested more in the form of storytelling than in the story...it was a good book, but definitely not the rich novel I was waiting for. After reading Carry Me, I'm feeling like I've been watching a writer who's publishing his writing exercises more than one who is obsessed with writing a great novel.

The main character of this story, August Kleinman, is very complex, with a past that includes horror, joy, wealth, and sorrow. What we witness in the book are mostly memories: of WWII, his childhood in NYC, his adulthood in Pittsburgh, and his retirement to Boston. Generally, this past is far more interesting than the present tense of the story until the end, when he travels to Japan to confront his wartime self and the family of the man he killed in battle (well, kind of a battle). I don't think the drama of this moment pops, however, because the cold detachment of the story keeps the character and the reader at a distance, and because the choices the author makes about who Kleinman meets in Japan just seems all wrong.

I think, in many ways, this book relies on good short story moments--the old rich man bagging groceries in order to stay useful, the old man mistaking his grandson for his son, the old man facing his past in Japan--rather than novel-length drama. In the end, I felt that sense of "Wow" that I feel after a good short story but not that deep satisfaction I feel after a novel, that feeling that I've made new friends and really know more about a place, a time, and a world than I did before.

Rating:
Summary: Worth the read........
Review: Ethan Canin's 'Carry Me Across the Water' is one of the most sensitive novels I've read in a long time.From pre World WarII Japan, to a cave on a Pacific island, to modern day life in Boston and New York, and back to Japan in the present, Canin takes the reader on one man's journey to finally deliver a letter.

Rating:
Summary: A rich and worthy read
Review: I bought "Carry Me Across The Water" the day it came out. I was blown away by Canin's book "For Kings & Planets" and had been eagerly awaiting his next one. I wasn't let down.
In comparison with Canin's other works, "Carry Me" is short and almost poetic. This sparse novel only runs 206 pages in length, but the story is infinitely bigger. August Kleinman, the main character, is a man driven to complete a task his life has been leading him toward...as a young soldier in the Pacific during World War II, he killed a Japanese soldier. 50 years later, he brings the soldier's family "souveniers" that he collected when he killed the soldier.
This book is a lot more than that, though. It is about love, and accepting the passage of time. It is about overcoming fear (particularly during the well-written World War II sequences.) It is also about moving on with your life.
I loved every page of this novel. In terms of emotional impact, I would say it is like "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee...it is a short, amazingly suspenseful work that you will think about and remember for a long time afterward.

Rating:
Summary: A rich and worthy read
Review: I bought "Carry Me Across The Water" the day it came out. I was blown away by Canin's book "For Kings & Planets" and had been eagerly awaiting his next one. I wasn't let down.
In comparison with Canin's other works, "Carry Me" is short and almost poetic. This sparse novel only runs 206 pages in length, but the story is infinitely bigger. August Kleinman, the main character, is a man driven to complete a task his life has been leading him toward...as a young soldier in the Pacific during World War II, he killed a Japanese soldier. 50 years later, he brings the soldier's family "souveniers" that he collected when he killed the soldier.
This book is a lot more than that, though. It is about love, and accepting the passage of time. It is about overcoming fear (particularly during the well-written World War II sequences.) It is also about moving on with your life.
I loved every page of this novel. In terms of emotional impact, I would say it is like "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee...it is a short, amazingly suspenseful work that you will think about and remember for a long time afterward.

Rating:
Summary: More great work from a gifted writer
Review: I loved this book. It's a riveting story of an old man's struggle to come to terms with a lifetime of decisions and their consequences. As Kleinman mounts a series of small, surprising initiatives to fight the boredom and loneliness of retirement and widowhood and to build a relationship with a grown son who distrusts and misunderstands him, he reflects with conflicting emotion on the experiences that have shaped his life. Canin covers an astonishing range of material here -- recognizing fear on his infant son's face in rough play, feeling peace as he and his mother fled Germany for America without his father-- these are moments so disparate in substance and scale and chronology that in most writers' hands the full story would take 600 pages to tell. Not in Canin's. He moves through them so seamlessly that despite my plans to get a good night's sleep I stayed up to finish the book in one sitting. And the compassion and emotional insight for which the author has earned a much-deserved reputation graces every scene. The CPR class Kleinman takes with his wife is alone worth the price of the book. This scene is less than a page (less than a page!), and reading it brought two friends who had not yet even read the rest of the book to tears.

For those of you who haven't read Canin's other work, I envy you. Read "The Palace Thief" after this one. I challenge you not to read it more than once.

Rating:
Summary: a bad book by a good author
Review: In his Carry Me Across the Water, Ethan Canin enables us to see the profound and indescribable depths of humanity through the most unlikely means. With a non-linear plotline, a snapshot-style narrative, and a protagonist who isn't always the most likeable of men, Canin slowly pulls back the curtain on the life of August Kleinman and a number of life's crucial themes.

Unlike many stories that struggle with the inner depths of a life, this is a masterpiece in reduction. By juxtaposing a few brief incidents in August's life, Canin alludes to the many great themes of life without losing us in the inconsequential details. I've noticed from other reviews here that some people feel as though Canin has given us a series of disconnected short stories rather than something complete. To a minimal extent that is true... much like it is true that all of our lives are really a series of seemingly disconnected events, and a focused plotline is something imposed by writers to make sense of it all. Canin shows us that, if you look closely enough, you might be able to grasp at the depths of life, even without the traditional narrative thread.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful Story of WW II Veteran Still Coming To Terms
Review: This is a powerful story about a war veteran who is nearing the end of his life and is trying to tie off loose ends, one of which is the letter he took from an enemy soldier. He has a complex relationship with his son, and exploring this helps the reader see how this elderly soul is battling his own desire to bury emotions with his desire to reach closure on some unresolved issues. The author is a fairly young man who writes eloquently about older people in most of his works. This is a great story on all levels: adventure, biography, and human affairs.