Meet the Northridges - they're a twentieth-century family. From the state of Nebraska, they are living through some history. It's a tough place, Nebraska - the endless grassy plains, the rivers, the occasional tornado ripping through and destroying everything you own - and breeds tough people. And sure enough the family patriarch who narrates the first section here, John Wesley Northridge II, is an uncompromising and irascible old character, of half-Lakota ancestry, made almost entirely out of knuckles and gristle. Already an old man when we first meet him in the mid-1950s, he lives a fairly solitary existence on his remote farm, something that suits him very well, thanks very much.
The only people he consents to spend time with regularly are his old friend and neighbour Lundquist, his daughter-in-law Naomi (wife of his late son, John Wesley Northridge III) and, favourite of all, his granddaughter Dalva, only in her early teens in this part of the novel but already a fierce and independent girl not prepared to take any shit from anybody, including her grandfather.
John Wesley has an odd encounter with a Native American, Smith, who he has not seen since childhood, and decides that his life is drawing to a close and that some mental stock-taking is probably in order. He reminisces at some length about his younger life, lovers, wives, children, adventures, and frets about what will become of his family, especially Dalva, who by this time has already got herself knocked up by an unsuitable young man and had to give up the baby for adoption.
We then shift narrators and jump forward nearly 30 years to the mid-1980s, and Nelse, who we soon learn is Dalva's son, is contending with some challenges of his own: his slightly ill-defined job as some sort of nature ranger, his clandestine relationship with his girlfriend J.M., inconveniently married to someone else right now, and the recently-acquired knowledge of his true parentage and the desire to know more, maybe by actually meeting in person. Eventually after much indecision he decides to seek out Naomi and Dalva, on the flimsy pretext of doing a bird survey on their land (a subterfuge that soon collapses once he meets them). After an initial period of wariness he is soon integrated into the family and decides to stick around for a while, a decision cemented by J.M.'s coming to join him, having ditched her no-good husband at the cost of a couple of black eyes.
So far so idyllic, but there is a cloud on the horizon: Dalva has been nursing some unspecified abdominal pains that she should really have been to the doctor about a while back, and when she does she finds that her worst fears are realised and she has a fairly advanced case of ovarian cancer. This prompts a bout of pre-death contemplation of her own (though somewhat more premature than her grandfather's as she is only in her mid-forties), and she enlists Nelse's help to set a few matters straight before she embarks on her final road trip to end things in a manner of her own choosing rather than in a hospital bed.
The narrative described, above, as engaging as it is, isn't really the point here - it's more about the background against which it all takes place, encompassing nearly a century of American history from Wounded Knee onwards. It's also about the individual characters, principally the assorted narrators: John Wesley and Nelse as already mentioned, but also Naomi, Paul (John Wesley's other son) and Dalva. It's also, more than most novels, about the physical landscape within which it's set and the living creatures (not just human) who inhabit that landscape, and also the characters' physical connection with the natural world, be it through work-related physical effort, recreation or carnality.
I discovered after having started The Road Home that it's actually the sequel to an earlier novel, called simply Dalva. I am here to tell you that I didn't feel like I was missing anything here by not having read that already, but that I do now intend to seek it out and read it, as I enjoyed this tremendously. Harrison is probably best-known for Legends Of The Fall, a short novel from 1979 made into a film in 1994 starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins among others. Another story from the same collection, Revenge, was also made into a film starring Kevin Costner in 1990.
I suppose if one were being hyper-critical one might say the first half of The Road Home is better than the second, John Wesley Northridge II's voice being the most compelling one telling the most compelling story, and once Nelse's section that follows it has finished all the major revelations have happened, apart from the news that Dalva is going to die. This is minor stuff, though, and I recommend it highly, although you should be aware that it's a big book in every sense - 446 pages in a too-big-for-the-bookshelves format the same size as House Of Leaves.
No comments:
Post a Comment