Title Late City
Author Robert Olen Butler
Genre Historical, Literary, Book of the Month
Publisher No Exit Press
Date Published 2022
Book Length 268
Format Paperback purchased for me as a present
Star Rating 3*** I liked it, it's OK
About Book
A visionary and poignant novel centred around former newspaperman Sam Cunningham as he prepares to die, Late City covers much of the early twentieth century, unfurling as a conversation between the dying man and a surprising God. As the two review Sam's life, from his childhood in the American South and his time in the French trenches during World War I to his fledgling newspaper career in Chicago in the Roaring Twenties and the decades that follow, snippets of history are brought sharply into focus.
Sam grows up in Louisiana, with a harsh father, who he comes to resent both for his physical abuse and for what Sam eventually perceives as his flawed morality. Eager to escape and prove himself, Sam enlists in the army as a sniper while still underage. The hardness his father instilled in him helps him make it out of World War I alive, but, as he recounts these tales on his deathbed, we come to realize that it also prevents him from contending with the emotional wounds of war. Back in the US, Sam moves to Chicago to begin a career as a newspaperman that will bring him close to all the major historical turns of the twentieth century. There he meets his wife and has a son, whose fate counters Sam's at almost every turn.
My Thoughts
Late City by Robert Olen Butler was given to me as a present and probably not a book I would have chosen for myself. I found it difficult to connect with the book at the beginning. The story is told by Sam Cunningham on his death bed and swings from talking about the story of his life to talking to God while he lay in his bed.
An unusual thing for me is the book is told as one chapter which feels a little odd, and I now realise that I like the pauses a new chapter brings. All, that being said Late City was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and I can see why, the prose is clear and dances through the pages and the voice of God is what I expect we hear when we are dying, thinking about what we have achieved throughout our lives is thought provoking.
A third of the way through, the book, for me, settles in, with a richness of the tale that takes you through a century of love, misunderstandings, questioning choices, decisions, and beliefs. Then towards the end there is more confusion for me.
In conclusion this book swung between being a 2 and 4 star read which is why I settled on a 3 star rating. In my eyes the book had great writing and was a great idea by Robert Olen Butler but for me it was sometimes confusing but still a 3*** read.
Comments