Two brothers, Viet-vet Harvey, and Minnesota county farm agent
Paul, sons of a Finnish-American hellfire preacher (who directed
Harvey to build a bomb shelter against the holocaust-to-come before
he died), are weighted with their legacies of fear and doom-haunted
memories. The pair are like "twin oxen struggling in different
directions against the same old yoke. . . the long history: the
town, the place, the forest and religion. . . human beings and
events, partly a genetic fix, an alchemy of circumstance." Paul,
unable to respond to the motherly devotion of his wife Grace, grows
flabby, goes through the motions on his job. Harvey is a Saturday
night good-time Charlie, spouting dreams and planning journeys to
far places. When the brothers are lost in a blizzard, it is the
weaker Paul who pulls ahead to save Harvey from death. But it is
not until the men decide to sell their property that Paul confronts
the frozen northland of his total impotence, and in a symbolic
immersion in a polluted pond, allows the "whole architecture of his
northern world to flow sweetly to ruin in the hot waters." Paul, at
last truly united with Grace, prepares to leave; but Harvey cannot
leave his life of circular illusion. The very earnestness and
clapboard verisimilitude of this first novel, manifested in speech
that marks time rather than bringing events and personality to the
flood, rescues the heavy-handed symbolism. It's a long, slow trek,
but worth going the distance. (Kirkus Reviews)
The acclaimed novel from the award-winning author of 'If I Die in a
Combat Zone', 'Going After Cacciato' and 'In the Lake of the
Woods'. The action in 'Northern Lights' takes place not in Vietnam
but back in the USA, as Tim O'Brien explores the after-effects of
that war - on those who served, and those they left behind. Set in
the frozen wilderness of north Minnesota, it concerns two brothers,
one who served in Vietnam, and has returned tough, cynical and
world-weary; and the other who stayed at home. When they take off
on a long skiing trip together through the frozen woods, they
quickly get lost in a blizzard, and are tested to their limits as
they face a battle against the elements and each other.
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