David James Duncan

Like the first viewer I am a huge fan of Duncan and was thrilled that he had a new book out. And for the first 250 pages or so I was enjoying the book a lot, but feeling evermore that it would not live to The Brothers K.

In the end I was deeply disappointed.

By the second two hundred page, it was becoming a slog, repetitive, long winded, taking a a couple of nice paragraphs and repeating their gist over and over for pages.

The last 250 pages were nearly unreadable, often just a string of random events and vignettes that added little new, and and kept hitting many of the same notes so hard it it was descending into self-parody. By this point I ceased to care about any of the characters and often resorted to skimming.

Some of his endnotes were entertaining: One in which he claimed to have pared the original manuscript down radically to leave only the most necessary and most meaningful passages (?1?!) The other in which he congratulated himself on doing a better job of "men writing women." Though I loved his previous books, his female characters were not his strong point. And frankly all of his characters strain belief in this book, but the women, especially Risi, are each different flavors of manic pixie dream girls.

This could have been a pretty darn good 350 page book.… (altro)

I am a HUGE David James Duncan fan - I've read his other novels (The River Why; The Brothers K) and all of his nonfiction, and I couldn't wait for his new novel to be released. Sun House is his first novel in 31 years! It is such a labor of love, so brilliant, so packed full of thought provoking insights and ideas, philosophy, comparative religion, humor, love.

That said, there were times this very long novel (761 pages) was a bit of a slog. The first half of the book was chock full of interesting characters and scenes, and I was enamored with it. Then about 3/4 of the way through it got so wordy, so bogged down with stilted and unlikely dialogue, and I got a bit confused about the characters, The storyline I was assuming would be the climax came at this point, and so swiftly it was a bit of a letdown.

Duncan obviously did a tremendous amount of research for this book - I think I read that it was a 16 year project. He writes brilliantly, his storytelling has always been remarkable. In Sun House, however, I found some sections overly long, some full of Sanskrit or Latin phrases that were difficult for me to get through, and a lot of woo-woo. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I love me some woo-woo. But this was a bit over the top even for me.

I love Duncan's vision of community in this novel - an inter-generational group of people who use their skills and strengths in service to the whole and who respect life in all its forms.

I do appreciate a novel with a lot of depth, one that helps me learn about new ways of living, communicating, or thinking. 75% of this book did that for me, but there were many obstacles to me diving in and staying there.

I sincerely hope we don't have to wait another three decades for Duncan's next novel. I still maintain that his writing is brilliant, usually highly readable, funny, and relevant.

I was sure this would be a five star book for me and one of my all time favorites. It's not that, but four big stars for brilliance and storytelling.… (altro)