Finn

Finn, Finn, Finn. So much to say about this book. If a book is measured by the emotion is evokes than Finn scores big time. The problem for me is how violent this book is. More than once I did not want to continue to reading. Violence to women, children, self. This is a dark novel. One reason it resonates so strongly is that no one is immune to abuse and addiction. In one form or another it has touched us all.

Huckleberry Finn is just a small part of this book. I totally hated how the author skipped back and forth between time and it took me awhile to figure out what the author was doing.

In this masterful debut by a major new voice in fiction, Jon Clinch takes us on a journey into the history and heart of one of American literature’s most brutal and mysterious figures: Huckleberry Finn’s father. The result is a deeply original tour de force that springs from Twain’s classic novel but takes on a fully realized life of its own.Finn sets a tragic figure loose in a landscape at once familiar and mythic. It begins and ends with a lifeless body–flayed and stripped of all identifying marks–drifting down the Mississippi. The circumstances of the murder, and the secret of the victim’s identity, shape Finn’s story as they will shape his life and his death.Along the way Clinch introduces a cast of unforgettable characters: Finn’s terrifying father, known only as the Judge; his sickly, sycophantic brother, Will; blind Bliss, a secretive moonshiner; the strong and quick-witted Mary, a stolen slave who becomes Finn’s mistress; and of course young Huck himself. In daring to re-create Huck for a new generation, Clinch gives us a living boy in all his human complexity–not an icon, not a myth, but a real child facing vast possibilities in a world alternately dangerous and bright.Finn is a novel about race; about paternity in its many guises; about the shame of a nation recapitulated by the shame of one absolutely unforgettable family. Above all, Finn reaches back into the darkest waters of America’s past to fashion something compelling, fearless, and new.

I have read a few reviews that talk about Finn’s humanity. The glimpses I saw, and they were few, did not make me feel sorry for him. He is a violent selfish man.

My parents were both abused. They managed to break the cycle of abuse and I am sure that it was not always easy. I could tell you stories that you would not believe; that would make your hair stand on end. My father’s half-brothers have not managed this feat. Abuse, addiction, and divorce is a strong theme in my father’s family. It has never occurred to me that my family would be good fodder for a book. But, it would. Adding to the abuse and addiction we have secret children that no one knew existed for years. And, maybe I ignore this side of my heritage because the darkness and drama is more than I can take.

Certainly, if this was a book read for a college course you would have a lot to write about.

I wonder what Mark Twain would think…