A powerful look inside someone else's head. Frank has been a bum, left his family without a word, for over 30 years. Now he's back in town, wandering with other indigents, eating at a mission & looking for an abandoned building to sleep in, and overpowered by flashbacks of his life, the fights he's had, his glory days as a ball player, his role in a worker's strike.[return]I saw the movie before I read this. As I read, the text brought up images from the powerful movie, increasing my connection with the text. Of course many of the thoughts were not filmed, and I don't remember any of the scenes with Katrina. The movie gave the impression that the "ghosts" he was seeing were a result of DT's, but reading the book it seemed just as possible that they were a product of his guilt, his need to stop running and face what he did. The ending of the novel is pretty ambiguous: will he really make a change, or are his thoughts those of a dying man?[return]"I believe we die when we can't stand it anymore. I believe we stand as much as we can and then we die when we can..." (p. 65)[return]"Flight again...in order to assert the one talent ...that let him dance on the earth to the din of brass bands..." (p. 147)[return]"if he was ever to survive, it would be ...with a clear head and a steady eye for the truth: for the guilt he felt was not worth the dying...The trick was to live, to beat...that fateful chaos and show them all what a man can do to set things right, once he sets hi mind to it." (p. 207) ( )

#681 in our old book database. Not rated.

Beautiful prose. After a while though, you want him to move things along a little quicker. ( )

Wow. I had no idea he was any good but this was mindblowing ( )

A soft pick as I've grown weary of this testosterone-soaked writing style. This is a bleak novel in which punishments are self-inflicted and permanent, in which a little self-reflection and humility would derail the entire plot. It is also a beautifully written novel and an honest portrayal of how people sabotage themselves. ( )