Crustaceans
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
It's December and there is one foot of snow. Paul, the narrator, is driving east to the seaside in the imaginary company of his son, Euan, whose sixth birthday this would have been. As he drives, and later as he wanders the coast, Paul assembles in detail the fragments of a life that seemed to have ended with Euan's. In this beautifully modulated, heart-rending novel, Andrew Cowan fathoms the relationship between a parent and child, as seen through the eyes of a man struggling to come to terms with his life and losses as both father and son. All the more powerful for its delicacy and restraint, this is a novel that resonates in the mind long after the last page.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An unspecified tragedy shadows this quietly poignant novel, which unfolds in flashbacks as its narrator drives toward the English coast on a snowy December day. Paul, a potter, is mentally addressing his young son, Euan, as he drives, telling his own history and also remembering the first five and a half years of Euan's life. As a boy, Paul is brought up by his father, a self-absorbed sculptor; his mother killed herself when Paul was Euan's age. His grandmother and grandfather offer him a kind of shelter, but not until he meets his future wife, Ruth, in art school is he the recipient of true affection. With a clear and lucid eye, Cowan limns a collection of short, significant moments in Paul's life, which define him as a man, lover and father. Like many men, Paul measures the value and richness of his life against the lives of his father and grandfather, seeking both similarities and differences that could yield up new revelations in his existential quest. If Cowan (Pig; Common Ground) sometimes lulls the reader with cozy, tender vignettes like snapshots in a dog-eared photo album, there's a mounting sense of dread throughout, leading to a terrifying scene of sudden loss. While the source of Paul's frenzied grief can be intuited early on, the ambiguous ending comes close to melodrama. Even so, the reader's attention is captured not so much by one significant moment as by the narrative's accumulated force and momentum, which, as in life, overwhelms and makes this book memorable and engrossing.
