i loved everything about this book. it's wonderfully written and the story touches on so many important and interesting ideas (ethics, death, life after death, family/parenting, love, loyalty, child rape, what it means to live, living by aphorisms). i wish i could write more concretely about this book; there was so much both tangible and intangible that i loved about it but i can't seem to make it cohesive enough to write about. i'll just say: this was a great read; i'm looking forward to exploring more of boswell's books. here's something else i'll say - from the moment i started reading, i knew that i'd love the book, just because of how it was written. even with that, the book kept surpassing expectations, both because of the writing, and also because of the story and the messages he was sending with his characters and their lives.

not a quote that conveys much about the story or it's scope, but that struck me just the same:

"Not heroism, exactly; being in the right place at the right time -- a more important gift to have than heroism, which was only rarely called for. Being in the right place at the right time was in constant demand." ( )

Peopled by a set of wonderful characters: a married couple--he, a garbage man; she, a political science professor at a university in an Illinois college town; their 20-year-old daughter & her 6-year-old son; the wife's eccentric elderly father (the "century's son"), who claims to have lived the entire 20th century & witnessed many of its key events, including an opportunity to assassinate Stalin; and a number of other richly portrayed lesser characters. The couple's son, then 12, committed suicide years earlier, and the marriage has suffered since. It seems like a sad, uneventful story, but it's one of those fundamentally life-affirming stories because of the wonderful characters & the very keenly observed domestic details, which made me smile in recognition. The intimate details include 4 brief but brilliant passages from the perspective of the family's aging, suffering dog. A brilliant book. ( )

This was a pretty slow read for me, and not particularly uplifting, but I enjoyed it in the end. Especially for readers who enjoyed The Corrections, but don't mind a slower read on other occasions, I'd recommend this. If you can get into it, the writing and the characters make it a worthwhile read. ( )