Editorial Review:Product Description:It is mid-October, 1997, harvest time in the Columbia Basin of central Washington state, a rich apple- and pear-growing region. Ben Givens, recently widowed, is a retired heart surgeon, once admired for his steadiness of hand, his precision, his endurance. He has terminal colon cancer. While Ben does not readily accept defeat, he is determined to avoid suffering rather than engage it. And so, accompanied by his two hunting dogs, he sets out through the mythic American West-sage deserts, yawning canyons, dusty ranches, vast orchards-on his last hunt. The main issues for Ben as a doctor had been tactical and so it would be with his death. But he hadn't considered the persuasiveness of memory-the promise he made to his wife Rachel, the love of his life, during World War II. Or life's mystery. On his journey he meets a young couple who are 'forever,' a drifter offering left-handed advice that might lessen the pain, a veterinarian with a touch only a heart surgeon would recognize, a rancher bent on destruction, a migrant worker who tests Ben's ability to understand. And just when he thinks there is no turning back, nothing to lose that wasn't lost, his power of intervention is called upon and his very identity tested. Full of humanity, passion, and moral honesty, East of the Mountains is a bold and beautiful novel of personal discovery.
Amazon.com Review:David Guterson's first novel,
Snow Falling on Cedars, was a true ensemble piece, in which even a high-stakes murder trial seemed like a judgment passed on the community at large. In his eloquent second novel, however, the author swings dramatically in the opposite direction.
East of the Mountains is the tale of a solitary, 73-year-old Seattle widower. A retired heart surgeon, Ben Givens is an old hand at turning isolation to his advantage, both professionally and personally: 'When everything human was erased from existence except that narrow antiseptic window through which another's heart could be manipulated--few were as adroit as Dr. Givens.'
Now, however, Ben has been dealt a problem entirely beyond his powers of manipulation: a diagnosis of terminal cancer. With just a few months to live, he sets out across the Cascades for a hunting trip, planning to take his own life once he reaches the high desert. A car crash en route puts an initial crimp in this suicide mission. But the ailing surgeon presses onward--and begins a simultaneous journey into the past. Between present-tense episodes, which demonstrate Ben's cranky commitment to his own extinction, we learn about his boyhood in Washington's apple country, his traumatic war experience in the Italian Alps, and the beginning of his vocation.
Guterson narrates the apple-scented idyll of Ben's childhood in a typically low-key manner--and orchards, of course, are seldom the stuff of melodrama. Still, many of his ambling sentences offer miniature lessons in patience and perception: 'They rode back all day to the Columbia, traversed it on the Colockum Ferry, and at dusk came into their orchard tired, on empty stomachs, their hats tipped back, to walk the horses between the rows of trees in a silent kind of processional, and Aidan ran his hands over limbs as he passed them with his horse behind him, the limbs trembling in the wake of his passing, and on, then, to the barn.' The wartime episodes, however, are less satisfactory. Clearly Guterson has done his research down to the last stray bullet, but there's a second-hand feeling to the material, which seems less a token of Ben's detachment than the author's.
There is, alas, an additional problem. Begin a story with a planned suicide, and there are exactly two possible outcomes. It would be unfair to reveal Ben's fate. But as the forces of life and death yank him one way, then another, Guterson tends to stack the deck--particularly during a bus ride toward the end of the novel, when Ben's fellow passengers appear to have wandered in from a Frank Capra film. Yet
East of the Mountains remains a beautifully imagined work, in which the landscape reflects both Ben's desperation and his intermittent delight. And Guterson knows from the start what his protagonist learns in painful increments: that 'a neat, uncomplicated end' doesn't exist on either side of the mountains.
--James Marcus
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Related Items:
see more
Related Items:
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
-
One man's melancholy autumn - in life
I read this book in October for my book club. It is the perfect month to set the tone for this book: the apple harvest, the chill in the air that forebodes of winter, the melancholy. Our main character is in the autumn of his life, and he has learned that he will not have a "winter" - he has terminal cancer. This is a quiet book, evoking the reflections of a man at a crossroads. He decides to explore what may lay down one road, suicide, by going on a hunting trip east of the mountains back to his home country. The geography of Eastern Washington combined with personal remembrances create a beautiful, bittersweet tale of personal discovery in a man who thought he knew himself. At journey's end, we rejoice with Ben in those moments that make life worth living.
Rating: 
-
Formulaic
This book follows a very predictable formula, and therefore, offers no real insights. Here is the Formula:
1. Terminally ill doctor (the doctor part is important to the plot) sets out on a journey to end his life.
2. It is necessary that the author gets him out of his car so he can interact with other people. So there is a car wreck.
3. The assorted people he runs into once he has been extracted from his isolated car, of course, offer him Things to Consider and A Reason to Live.
4. End of story.
The doctor part is necessary because that enables him to do noble, helpful things for his Fellow Man (or Woman), including delivering a baby. This presumably shows him there is still a role for him in life, however long it is.
Ho hum. If only life were really this neat and provided such handy packaged answers to our despair.
Rating: -
SORRY...NOT THAT INTERESTING
I started the book with anticipation and enjoyed the first few chapters. However, the story started going downhill when Ben meets character after character with not much happening. Ben doesn't seem to come to any conclusions through the course of his physcial journey and and I didn't see any emtional journey taking place either. Also, the writer mentions geographic areas endlessly and unless you're familiar with the area of eatern Washington, it was bit boring to hear of all the landmarks and town names. Not a very stimulating read.
Rating: 
-
subtly captivating
With the first sentence I was captivated; "On the night he had appointed his last among the living, Dr. Ben Givens did not dream, for his sleep was restless and visited by phantoms who guarded the portal to the world of dreams by speaking relentlessly of this world." I read this book because I loved reading Snow Falling on Cedars and wanted to read another book by this author. Guterson weaves a story of love between a husband and wife into a story about dying and does it well. He writes of the value of life even when facing imminent death and proves his point without being preachy. Guterson's writing has a way of being subtle and also captivating.
Rating: -
Not done with life yet....
People seem to really like or really dislike this book. I enjoyed it very much and recommend it highly. I'm giving nothing away in telling you it's about a dying man and how he makes elaborate plans to leave this life -- and then what happens instead... a very "human" book, one that ably demonstrates how even a dying grandfather still has the capacity to grown and learn.