West of Here

By: Jonathan Evison

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

From the rugged mudflats of the Northwestern frontier to a rusting strip mall, West of Here is a conversation between two epochs. In his eagerly awaited second novel, Jonathan Evison tells the stories of the people who first inhabited the mythical town of Port Bonita in Washington State from 1887-1891. Moving ahead more than a century to 2005-06, he introduces those who live there now and must deal with the damage done by their predecessors.

The characters are drawn with compassion and truth, the themes are grand and sweeping: regeneration, the trappings of history, the elusive nature of perception, who makes footprints and who follows them. Evison writes with heart and verve, capturing evocative details and unforgettable scenes.

©2011 Jonathan Evison (P)2011 HighBridge Company

Critic reviews

"Deserves national acclaim." ( Library Journal)

Interesting

I would have liked it to stay more in the historical mode. The references to the Raiders baffled me. The Raiders are in Oakland.....the SeaHawks are in Seattle....unless there's another televised Raiders team in Port Bonita. Hmmmm.

Comes together slowly...

This comes together slowly and is sometimes hard to keep up with the characters and their connection.

Depressing and perplexing

Like the previous reviewer, I also am abandoning with 5 hours to go. I do think Evison is a talented writer; his characters well drawn. But each character is so trapped in difficult circumstance, each so burdened with hopelessness, it just wears on the listener to the point where one just wants the book to end The characters do not so much as advance or change as survive. One stops caring. That admittedly is more a reflection of me than Evison's writing, but be forewarned - this is a gloomy read. I also do not see much ( if any) connection between 1890 and 2006, other than each has its own set of difficulties. There is no thread connecting the two time periods.

A disappointing selection

I didn't like it!

I kept on listening since it was a time filler, but found it often crude. I was hoping for a clincer for the story to give it more meaning but was disapointed to the very end.

Very disappointing

First of all, I love sagas. I particularly like historical fiction. and so I was very interested in listening to this book. However, there are so many characters, separated by more than a century, that the thread (and interest) is hard to follow. I really didn't identify with or care about any of the various characters or their plights. I haven't listened to the reader before and I thought that he was good. So I plodded through most of the book and gave up half way through the second part...something that I almost never do.