So Far Gone

Rhys Kinnick, after a fight with his idiot Son-in-Law, after being downsized out of the journalism job he loved, packs up and moves to the woods, to an abandoned cabin well outside of Spokane, Washington. His intention was to write a book and read and get away from the world and he's done a lot of reading, far away from civilization, but seven and a half years later, he's still there. Then a woman brings his grandchildren to him, children he hasn't seen in years, with the news his daughter has disappeared and left a note that he should take in the kids until she's back. Shane, the idiot Son-in-Law, replaced a drug addiction by joining ever more extreme religious groups, his current church is one with a militia in western Idaho. Rhys is show more not set up to care for a nine and a thirteen year old, but here they are.

"I'm a prodigy," the boy said.

Leah sought out her grandfather's eyes and gave him a small shake of the head meant to convey, No. He's not. Asher had, indeed, been the fifth-ranked eight-year-old in the Southern Oregon Chess Club. But that was among the seven eight-year-olds who had qualified for ranking.

"Dad and Pastor Gallen are praying about whether chess is a Godly endeavor," Asher said. "It comes from the Arabs, which Pastor Gallen says is bad, and Dad is worried the board represents the illuminati and has graven images. But Mom says I can keep playing while they're discerning."

What follows is a man who has not kept up with events, now thrust into the world as it is, trying to protect his grandchildren. Shane enlists his militia, called the Army Of the Lord (AOL for short), to get his children back and Rhys has his best friend and an ex-cop turned private detective on his side. What follows is both dead serious and funny. Walter knows this part of the world and the people who live there very well and his writing is always sharp and full of understanding. One of the best books I've read this year. show less

A blowup at Thanksgiving between Rhys Kinnock, an environmental journalist, and his right-wing Christian son-in-law leads to a rupture in the family and Kinnock's retreat to a remote piece of land outside Spokane that he inherited from his father. He can no longer bear the country that he feels has gone stark raving mad. There he lives like a hermit among piles of books until one day a woman shows up at his door with two children who he doesn't recognize - his grandchildren. His daughter asked a neighbor to take them there after she left her husband, who has become deeply involved in an armed religious group that is preparing for the End Times.

When he takes the kids to a chess tournament at a church that the boy wants to compete in, show more though it turns out they have the wrong day, a couple of toughs take the children to be with their father, leaving Rhys with a broken cheekbone (tended to by the priest, who turns out to have a background in boxing). A former girlfriend and journalist introduces him to an ex-cop private investigator who has bipolar disorder, and he leads the charge to the compound where the kids and their father are staying. With the rescued kids in tow, Kinnock sets out to find their mother.

I loved this novel. It starts out appearing to be about the breakdown of normal society, overtaken by irrational conspiracy theories and religious fundamentalism, but it's really about the relationship between Kinnock and his daughter, as well as with the children who have grown up in a family that's much more complicated than the simple depiction of fundamentalist crazies. There's a kind of tender acknowledgement by the end that Kinnock's dismissal of his son-in-law's views overlooked his fundamental foolish innocuousness. The kids, too, are wonderfully portrayed in a way that refuses to divide the world into religious tomfoolery and rational liberalism. It's strangely generous and hopeful though there's no papering over the complexity of Kinnock's relationship with his daughter. It's also very funny, and while there's a dramatic and violent climax, the ending is much less reductionist about our present moment than it might seem to readers at the start. show less

Jess Walters' portrayal of his characters rivals Franzen for depth, but where Franzen can be pitiless, Walters forgives everyone who has a conscience. I read this book in three sittings, pulled along as much by the characters as by the plot, and for Walters' way with description, always incisive and illuminating, but never showy. There is also a moral dimension here that I appreciate. I imagine many people know they should be more understanding and give people the benefit of the doubt more often, and Walters' approach to his characters illustrates how you might go about that. Kirkus Reviews, who so often seem to miss the point, are spot on here when they say that the author is "a beacon of wit, decency, and style."

There is a story here, show more and it's a good one, but it's the characters who will live in your memory. show less

Rhys Kinnick, a former environmental journalist before his foundering newspaper offered him a buyout in 2015, had been living off the grid outside of Spokane, Washington for the past seven years. He decamped from society after punching his son-in-law Shane in the face during a tense Thanksgiving dinner his daughter Bethany hosted in 2016. Rhys couldn’t take Shane’s crazy, conspiracy-laden White Christian nationalism anymore, and then decided he couldn’t take the direction of life in general anymore. Kinnick felt helpless: “the sense that, just when he thought it couldn’t get worse, it not only got worse, but exponentially more insane.” He mused, “At some point, you look around, and think, I don't belong here anymore. I show more don't want to have anything to do with any of this."

But Rhys’s priorities suddenly changed when his 13-year-old granddaughter Leah and 6-year-old grandson Asher showed up at his door one day. Their mother Bethany had herself run off, and left a note asking a neighbor to deliver the kids to Rhys.

Kinnick found out the family had actually been living nearby, in Spokane, but Shane wanted them to move to Idaho where he was a member of the Army of the Lord, part of the Church of the Blessed Fire. Shane also wanted 13-year-old Leah to be betrothed to the 19-year-old pastor’s son David Jr.; they could be married in Idaho when Leah turned 16.

Rhys, confronted with his grandchildren abandoned on his doorstep, and learning about the plans made for them, experienced a sense of concern and responsibility in him that he thought had dried up long ago.

Leah asked her grandfather why he had “dropped out” in the first place. How could he explain it to her? He thought:

“As a journalist, as a rationalist, Kinnick had come to terms with the fact that 20 percent of his countrymen were greedy assholes. But then, in 2016, the greedy assholes joined with the idiot assholes and the paranoid assholes in what turned out to be an unbeatable constituency, Kinnick realizing that the asshole ceiling was much higher than he’d thought, perhaps half the country. Whatever the number, it was more than he could bear. Especially when they were in his own family.

. . .

. . . Whatever their motivation, for Kinnick, it was all just part of a long sad cultural slide that he’d had the misfortune of witnessing firsthand (celebrity entertainment bleeding into government, cable TV eroding newspapers, information collapsing into a huge Internet-size black hole of bad ideas, bald-faced lies, and bullshit, until the literal worst person in America got elected president). There was inside of Kinnick an emptiness that felt like depression.”

When members of Shane’s Army of the Lord showed up and forcibly took away the children, Kinnick sprang into action; he had to get them back at any cost. He enlisted the help of Chuck, the ex-cop-ex-boyfriend of an ex-girlfriend, and Chuck began by tutoring Rhys in the ways of this new world:

“‘Okay, you’ve got fifteen rounds in the magazine. Now I’m going to show you how to load one of those rounds, how to cock it, how to turn off the safety, and how to fire it. But we are not going to fire it, are we? . . . Chuck’s voice got cheerier. ‘Any questions?’

The high note seemed so insane that Kinnick could only laugh. Any questions? How about: What the hell? White Nationalist goons stealing children from church parking lots? Rural sheriffs telling him to go pound sand? A manic ex-cop showing him how to shoot people in the front pocket? Was this just how people behaved now? Is this what the world had come to? Seven years in the woods only to emerge and find everything had gotten crazier?”

What follows is part crazy hijinks, part a frightening look at where this country is heading with “shithead soldier/cop-wannabes” terrorizing people in the name of religion, and perhaps most consequentially, part a touching paean to the power of connection to combat despair in a world gone mad.

Evaluation: This book is simultaneously scary, laugh-out-loud funny, and right on point politically. The characters are endearing - even, surprisingly, the less-than-sympathetic ones, and the writing is clever and engaging. It would make an excellent book club book for discussion, and a great movie! show less

Rhys Kinnick has done what a lot of us would like to do, given the stupidity of the world right now: run away to live alone in a remote cabin in the woods. He did this because his daughter has married an idiot who believes the right-wing conspiracies he reads on the internet. After a few years of isolation, Rhys is surprised to find his grandchildren on his doorstep - they are there because their father is at a right-wing Christian cult retreat and their mother has disappeared. This sets off a darkly humorous thriller as Rhys, with the help of an ex-girlfriend's ex-cop ex-boyfriend and a cynical Native American, tries to track down his daughter and rescue his grandkids from their father's Christian cult.

Jess Walter is always an show more excellent writer, so naturally this is a fun and engaging read. Rhys and his daughter have a strained relationship, and the story includes their attempts at reconciliation. I often find books about family reconciliations to be too tidy, but Walter handles this well: their attempts to find common ground are messy and uneven and incomplete, and far more believable than most fictional reconciliations.

All in all, this is an enjoyable read. It's a little too relevant to be enjoyable in a lot of ways - I appreciated the revenge fantasy of seeing the downfall of right-wing militia idiots, but I also know those people are real and dangerous. show less

Rhys Kinnick is out of it. He is living in a cement block shack on the edge of the wilderness surrounded by thousands of books and a large number of notebooks filled with his thoughts on those books and others. He thinks of himself as well shot of a world he no longer understands and which, to be fair, does’t understand him. With enough time with his books he might just get to something profound about life, nature, people and our place in it all. If only those pesky racoons would leave him alone. Then a knock at his door brings chaos and confusion and two young children, apparently his grandchildren, and one last shot at, maybe, redemption. But once you open your door, one thing just leads to another and pretty soon someone’s going show more to end up dead. Maybe we all are.

Jess Walter has crafted another engaging state of the nation novel that reads like a thriller. Unfortunately the state of his nation is a bit unsettling at the moment. Which probably explains why things just seem to go from crazy to crazier. And the only glimmer of hope that appears here is, maybe, a future generation that somehow miraculously will find a spark in reading literature and seeing the world with new eyes. Well, yes, that sounds a bit like wishful thinking, but after all, this is fiction.

At times grim, at times funny, at times poignant, but always enjoyable. And so easy to recommend. show less

Balm for the soul during the grim hopelessness of Trump's second term. Rhys Kinnick is a wonderfully flawed man who thought living off the grid was the only choice left for him when he just doesn't seem to fit in daily life anymore. A life of seclusion has its benefits but, when he finds out that his daughter is in trouble, Kinnick knows it's time to break out of his cocoon. This literary fiction has a touch of thrilling adventure and insightful (politically liberal) musings on what American society has become.