Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Not for weak stomachs.
I’m not one to enjoy war writing. It’s not that I want to repress these important stories, but just a personal preference. I find it difficult to keep up with the movements, the sequence of jumps from trench to tank. I feel desperate, thinking, “Who’s going to die next?
Still, I like Boyden, and I like what he does with narrative—weaving tales together without too much force or showy craftsmanship. The multiplicity of voices, in other words, reads like a conversation, instead of as a “PoMo Canlit novel.” Confluence is most interesting here in the narrator’s voice: Xavier moves from recalling his own experiences in the first-person, to relating his friend Elijah’s experiences in an unusually personal third-person, forcing the reader to constantly ask, “How does X access these thoughts? know these stories? taste the blood of Elijah’s kills like that?” It’s only mildly convincing that Xavier tells us, time and time again, that Elijah just couldn’t keep anything from him. Interestingly, the confusion of identities bookends the novel.
Of course, as I am bound to do with fictional old ladies, I fell in love with the wizened Niska. I believe that it’s through her that X remains, throughout his journeys, the one we want to know more, the one we both want and don’t want to become.
But, not too much more on this. Don’t want to spoil the read for anyone.
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