The Walkaway

Rating:
Summary: Brave, adventurous, and poignant!
Review: "The Ice Harvest" was my favorite book of 2000. With "The Walkaway" Scott Phillips confirmed my suspicions that he is one of the best writers working today. Yes, there are many characters and overlapping storylines in this book. So what? I had no trouble whatsoever following these stories, and the subtle emotional payoff that was delivered as they all tied together was an original, unexpected delight. Phillips doesn't write for dummies. He's hunting big game on the literary frontier. And with this book he has bagged a winner. He manages to combine deadpan humor, stark reality and deep, resonant emotions in a way unique to the current spate of by-the-numbers best sellers clogging the bookstores. I can't wait to see what he does next!

Rating:
Summary: Brave, adventurous, and poignant!
Review: "The Ice Harvest" was my favorite book of 2000. With "The Walkaway" Scott Phillips confirmed my suspicions that he is one of the best writers working today. Yes, there are many characters and overlapping storylines in this book. So what? I had no trouble whatsoever following these stories, and the subtle emotional payoff that was delivered as they all tied together was an original, unexpected delight. Phillips doesn't write for dummies. He's hunting big game on the literary frontier. And with this book he has bagged a winner. He manages to combine deadpan humor, stark reality and deep, resonant emotions in a way unique to the current spate of by-the-numbers best sellers clogging the bookstores. I can't wait to see what he does next!

Rating:
Summary: A sophisticated 2nd novel
Review: After reading ICE HARVEST, I could not wait to get my hands on Phillips' next novel. If it had been another pulp yarn in the vein of his first novel, I would have been plenty satisfied. But THE WALKAWAY goes far beyond expectations. It is a sophistcated book showcasing Phillips' deft skills as an author. He expertly handles different times and points of view. The novel works as a literary achievement as well as a top-notch crime tale.

There's a lot of [stuff] to wade through out there in the book stores -- same-old-same-old cops-n-robbers plodding through the usual formulas. It was a breath of fresh air to read a novel with ambition and style.

Rating:
Summary: A sophisticated 2nd novel
Review: After reading ICE HARVEST, I could not wait to get my hands on Phillips' next novel. If it had been another pulp yarn in the vein of his first novel, I would have been plenty satisfied. But THE WALKAWAY goes far beyond expectations. It is a sophistcated book showcasing Phillips' deft skills as an author. He expertly handles different times and points of view. The novel works as a literary achievement as well as a top-notch crime tale.

There's a lot of [stuff] to wade through out there in the book stores -- same-old-same-old cops-n-robbers plodding through the usual formulas. It was a breath of fresh air to read a novel with ambition and style.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Call It Noir...
Review: I don't normally read "crime fiction" (or whatever this is) but I really enjoyed Phillips' first book, "The Ice Harvest," which created a neat, sweaty mood and sustained it.
The twist ending of that book sets up the beginning of this book, but you really don't need to have read that one to enjoy this one. Again, it's a well-written story of greed and lust and rage, set in a small Midwestern town. I couldn't put it down.
Two notes: First, as has been noted by other reviewers, there are multiple points of view here and two different time frames. You'll be well-served to take notes on the characters' names and who they are, what their relationships are, etc. This isn't Dostoyevsky, but there are a lot of names here and the relationships and time frames are pretty tangled. Half the fun, of course, is unravelling all of it (especially the relationships), but a simple list of characters would have helped. The publisher should really consider doing that in the paperback edition.
Second, as a result of keeping the notes above, I realized that one character is referred to by two different names, with no narrative reason or explanation. The character is "Carswell" who is also referred to in a couple of places as "Gladwell." I think it's just a mistake or an editorial problem or something. That should also definitely be corrected in future editions.
This is a well-written book, with a lot of depth, an interesting plot, and some despicable characters doing nasty things to each other - and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.

Rating:
Summary: Extending his range
Review: THe Ice Harvest was a dark piece of noir, very funny and painfully good. With this one, Phillips paints several pictures at once, all a little different, all building to a great story. I like the fracture of different points of view, giving me more depth than a single POV, more complication added to the richness.

And still, he's just drop dead funny in the darkest sense, which is the best sense.

Rating:
Summary: Combining The Past With The Present
Review: This is an interesting, character-heavy book, which relives the past while living through a present-day upheaval. The upheaval in question revolves around Gunther Fahnstiel who has walked out of his nursing home without any of the nursing staff noticing. Naturally his family is beside themselves and are very keen to have him found again. Gunther was in the nursing home because of the steady onset of senility. He's an ex-policeman and believes that he has some urgent unfinished business to take care of, leading him through the streets of Wichita, Kansas.

The time setting switches from chapter to chapter, taking us from 1989 back to 1952. The chapters about the earlier years are all written from a third person perspective, but the person whose perspective it is coming from changes in each chapter providing very interesting insights into each character.

Through Gunther's slipping mind it becomes clear that something very important happened in 1952 that has affected Gunther and most of the other characters in the book quite deeply. Gunther is drawn back to the place it all happened thinking he has some loose ends to tie up and so, all plotlines are inevitably drawn along with him, providing a satisfying, yet somewhat wistful ending.

Rating:
Summary: Confusing and boring
Review: This is one of the worst books I've read recently. It is confusing in structure without apparent purpose other than to be cute. Characters come and go and are not particularly well developed or interesting. I kept reading because of the strong reviews of this and his first book, but it wasn't worth it.

Rating:
Summary: Confusing and boring
Review: This is one of the worst books I've read recently. It is confusing in structure without apparent purpose other than to be cute. Characters come and go and are not particularly well developed or interesting. I kept reading because of the strong reviews of this and his first book, but it wasn't worth it.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling and dark
Review: This novel jumps between time periods and characters so often I lost track of who was who. Perhaps this was largely because most of them were so shallow and had so little time spent on them that I didn't rally care. So it is a failure as a story of characters, and it is also a failure at suspense as the mystery turns out not to have been much of one to begin with. And I didn't see any humor in it, so what was the point?