Neverhome by Laird Hunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Neverhome is a the story of a lady who becomes a soldier in the Civil War. It’s full of very beautiful language. Also, the sections of disorientation are good. When the vicissitudes of war render the protagonist confused, the prose reflects that. That’s well done.
The tenderness between the protagonist and her husband is wonderful. I enjoyed the false Odyssey ending. Won’t say more than that.
The novel is a bit short. The development of the protagonist from raw recruit to old war dog happens off-stage. And other plot points like that. So the ending felt less realistic and grounded than if there had been a bit more prior development. There could also have been more concrete detail to the backstory. Or it could have come in a different order. For instance, I thought at first that the husband back at the farm was her brother. The author already spreads the story of their romance out over several sections; if the first of those had come nearer to the beginning of the novel, I would have been less confused.
The character portraits are wonderful. There’s nobility and honor as well as cruelty and pettiness. Comedy and tragedy. The stock Civil War characters are there, as well as
The narrative passes through many different scenes, like paintings in a gallery. You sense the the world is a kaleidoscope that the war has shaken up. Nobody knows what the arrangement will be when it finally settles down. And we get these glimpses of the past order of things just before it passes away. Or are they glimpses of a new order only now emerging?
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