[.ca] Before and After: A Novel (ISBN 0312424418)

honest reactions:
Brown says, "I take very seriously the idea that novelists raise questions and don't necessarily answer them," and that "Novels are where we learn what it feels like to be someone else, where we learn to be patient with ways of looking at things that are not our own." (These quotes are from an interesting overview of the writer at ..., which is a great source for all sorts of literary stuff.) I think that some of the readers on this page need to keep this approach in mind before dismissing the book because they don't like the characters. I think Brown would say they're missing the point. What was most notable about this book to me was that the situation is so ghastly, you can't imagine how you'd deal with it. I liked the way the main characters reacted so differently, and that the father did something that seems as terrible as the son, and yet, while you want to slap him and tell him to snap the hell out of it, you have to recognize the emotional truth of his reaction. Some readers seem to want a clear-cut resolution, but to do so would immeasurably flatten the book and diminish the power of the story. For instance, in writing off the son as an irredeemable creep while lauding the daughter's characterization, readers are ignoring her loyalty to her brother, which clearly doesn't spring out of a vacuum. The characters are extremely flawed and complex, and they get into your brain. You may want to hug them or shake them or yell at them, but whatever your reaction, they seem incredibly alive. Brown's a poet, and some of her descriptions are beautiful if a fair amount of the dialogue, particularly early on, isn't esp. natural; small price to pay for some of the lines, which are beautiful, simple, and true. Good book, and a fast read as it's extremely compelling.

The Family that Slays Together, Stays Together:
Sickening. That's the best word I can come up with to describe this novel. A teenage boy slaughters his girlfriend. His father immediately destroys the evidence. Mom is unhappy about it, but goes along for the ride. Dad helps son craft a false story that will stand up in court. Nowhere in this book do the parents confront the son, and tell him what he did was wrong. Their machinations are ultimately successful in helping him get off scot-free. The family moves out of state, and (presumably) lives happily ever after. And we're supposed to sympathise with these morally bankrupt felons? I wanted to see them all doing hard time.

Moral Dillema:
This book was thoroughly engaging in terms of how each character tried to deal with such a horrific event. I think that if I ever had a child who committed such a crime I'd probably want to protect him or her as much as possible too. It is interesting to see how each character decided what was the "right" thing to do. Perhaps it would have been nice if the parents had tried to discuss the "wrongness" of what he did with him. However, nothing they can say or do can bring that girl back and all the talk (in previous reviews) about wanting to see the son are warranted, but seem very extreme. The section with the "molestation" has been overly emphasized in previous reviews. In my humble opinion, that was nothing more than a curiosity explored and was fairly non-sexual. This isn't the most exciting and fast paced book, but is worth a read just to hear Brown's excellent use of language.

Gripping, but ultimately disappointing:
The pace is suspenseful and Brown's prose is as smooth, competent, and professional as could be. But ultimately the book is a huge disappointment. Only the daughter, Judith, comes alive for the reader as an individual. The father, Ben, and mother, Carolyn, never rise above type: she's a cool, rational professional; he's a hotheaded, arrogant artist. But they have little texture or personality beyond that. There is little indication what they ever saw in each other and no sense of their relationship outside of/before the central conflict of the book. And the son, Jacob, is a cypher. I realize that one of the points of the book may be that we can never know how or why a kid goes bad/goes wrong, but shouldn't the novelist attempt to at least explore some possibilities? But in order to do this, we'd have to know more about this kid than his crime, and we are told very little. Other reviewers have fixated on the animal abuse and "molestation" of his sister (it's not clear he was even old enough at the time to qualify as a molester, but leave that aside for now) but even these are so sketchy as to not be particularly enlightening. And the parents themselves--despite the pages and pages of introspection--seem unbelievably shallow and lacking in the most basic of questions. Consumed as they are with what they should do next, they never once ask themselves "how did this happen?" "is this my fault?" or even such niggling little questions as "why didn't I know my son had a girlfriend?" I find this hard to believe. . . Finally, the book does not deliver the emotional goods. As a parent, the idea of having to face this kind of tragedy/dilemma should have had me quaking and crying, but instead I just felt annoyed at the characters and irritated at the author. One never really *feels* the love and guilt that are supposedly driving these characters, making feeling any empathy for them very difficult.

Deja Vu!:
I am halfway through reading this book and am stunned at the similarities between it and Judith Kelman's "After the Fall". In Kelman's book, a New England couple are stunned when their teenage son is accused of attacking a neighborhood girl. The mother is a doctor; the father is more of a house husband, and they have a preadolescent daughter, too....the same cast of characters as in "Before and After"! The simliarities don't end there....as the couple struggle to cope with the accusations, they are faced with neighborhood gossip, harassing phone calls and a lot of unanswered questions from their uncooperative son. I feel as though I am reading the same exact book for the second time!