Review: Layered Novel About the Complex Relationships Between Friends and Family
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 21, 2014
“Chords, Words, and Some News from Times Long Past” is a contemporary fiction novel that follows the Seger family—in particular two brothers, Karl and Seth—and their entanglement with Paul and Agnes Lee, also siblings. The novel begins in a Swedish dance hall with Karl and Seth’s father growing wild with jealousy when the woman he loves dances with another man—and the incidents that occur that night will have lasting vibrations throughout the years.The novel then weaves back and forth from 1950, to various times in the 1970s and 1980s, to 1992 and beyond. Both brothers love Agnes and will hurt her in their own ways, and Paul acts as a sporadic narrator; we get only his thoughts and observations in the first person, as he observes major events in history and major events in his own life.This is a heavy novel, with themes of love, domestic abuse, ambition, parental relationships, failure, success, homosexuality, and corporate corruption; its characters go from carefree young people with the world at their feet to jaded, tired adults who face tragedy as best they can. While the plot is compelling and the characters appealing—though all flawed and not always likeable—it could use another edit to fix some grammar/spelling errors that are a little distracting. However, if you enjoy novels that span generations and are also heavily steeped in political and social culture of past decades, I would recommend “Chords.”