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Ellen Isaacs | |
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East of the Mountains is a simple story. Ben Givens, a Seattle-area doctor in his 70s, learns he has terminal cancer. Knowing the horror of the disease's course, he decides to take his life but to make it look like a hunting accident so his family doesn't have to know about the disease or that he took his life. The book takes place over the next few days as he tries to carry out his plan but is foiled, first by a car accident that ironically nearly takes his life, and then by a series of quests to rescue his hunting dog and to aid some migrant farm workers. He treats these events as diversions that interrupt but don't deter his goal, and yet there is an odd incongruity in his concern about the daily details of life when one would expect him to be letting go. Like Guterson's earlier book Snow Falling on Cedars, this book is beautifully written and a pleasure to read. The main character, Ben Givens, is very richly described. He comes to life both through a series of flashbacks that flesh out his history as well as through the detailed description of his matter-of-fact reactions to the events occurring in the present. The other characters in the book play only small roles, and yet most of them felt real, each one adding interest to the story. Givens has a gift for portraying characters succintly through choice details. Consider this introduction of the veterinarian who helps save the dog. "The veterinarian was a solid young woman with the sturdy hands and face of a farmgirl and thick, soda-bottle glasses. She spoke in the direct, firm way of the country, with the vigorous practicality and certainty that had remade the sage desert into fields. Kneeling in the parking lot, she examined Rex, and Ben guessed she was not yet thirty, even though her professional manner suggested years of experience. There was something irrepressibly young in her, some vague crack in her doctorly demeanor through which her private self seeped as she introduced herself as Dr. Peterson and made note of his blackened eye without commenting on it." Beyond enjoying the characters and the storytelling, I experienced this book as a reminder to appreciate the dailiness of life, the small interactions with strangers, the minor obstacles we overcome along the way. I especially appreciated Ben's inability to disconnect from these concerns, even when it all should have seemed trivial from the perspective of life and death. I took Guterson to be saying that those details are what matters when seen in the right perspective.
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