It's a complicated structure and necessarily a bit confusing. In a prose as evocative and clear as any being written in America today, Delbanco draws us into the very thought processes of his characters, showing us the past through their eyes and with the thick reality of their emotions. The exactitude and plenitude of detail in this book have the authenticity of real literary imagination, a world recreated through precisely drawn objects and sensations, a deeply empathetic construction of character and place, informed by nostalgia and love. But everything here is vivid and important. When writing from a child's point of view, Delbanco has the gift of mixing passing images and deep observation.
Lived memory is composed of accidental details, retained by a logic beyond our control.
The novel's multiple points of view allow unusual insight into each of the characters. So Julia, the wise and didactic mother, emerges in a complex portrait created by combining the views of Ben and his brother, Jacob, and their father, Karl. In Judaism, writes John Sanford, it is the old men who are beautiful. But the figure of this troubled, courageous, careful woman will stay with me for a great long time, and the unveiling of the trauma at the heart of her emotional life is so skillfully handled that it provides this unusually complex novel with a dimension of suspense that any mystery writer would envy. News Jobs AP Shopping Archives Entertain.