March 2022 Book Choice
About Grace by Anthony Doerr
This is the author’s first novel.
David Winkler is 59 and is going home for the first time after 25 years. He has been a lover, a husband, a father and a hydrologist. Since he was a child he has been plagued by premonitions. In one he dreamt of a flood; dreamt that he failed to save his baby, Grace, and so left before he had to see it happen. The consequences of this decision marks the rest of David’s life, first as an exile on a Caribbean island, then as an old man, come back to Alaska to find his daughter. Throughout he is determined to photograph the ephemeral beauty of snowflakes.
We had all read All the Light We Cannot See, one of the author’s later books. We loved this and found About Grace what we can only describe as a ‘let down’ and a disappointment. We didn’t warm to David as a character, he seemed fickle and strange in his decision making.
There was some wonderful prose describing the warmth of the Caribbean and the incredible cold of Alaska. The Aurora Borealis with its ‘shivering emeralds and blues trimmed with red, jade, violets and an eerie green’ But this prose was so protracted and went on and on. Just how many ways can you describe a snowflake, we asked ourselves!
The score for this book was one of our lower ones, a 5, and we were unanimous in not recommending it as a good read.