Small world jonathan evison
Jonathan Evison has called it a vision quest. Hell, he’s even said he’s taking a shot at the Great American Novel, when referring to his seventh novel, Small World, a multiple perspective, multi-generational story about a western American train about to crash. We follow the lives of several characters in 2017-2019, with chapters included from their ancestors back in the 1850s. What unites them is their western journeys and desires to make something better for themselves. Evison’s big-hearted American epic delivers contemporary characters with their pioneering pasts, and he pulls it off without preaching or pandering. While Evison has used alternative timelines in novels like West of Here and Legends of the North Cascades, Small Planet feels bigger and more in keeping with our post-pandemic future. It’s a Dickensian 19th century throwback, grappling with big American themes and ideas: multiculturalism, westward expansion and Manifest Destiny, gold rushes, technological advances, homesteading, slavery, immigration, bigotry, and regeneration through violence. It’s a timeless American story, with vivid well-rounded characters, who have a lot to tell us about the nature we live
Small World
Jonathan Evison. Dutton, $28 (480p) ISBN 978-0-593-18412-7
Evison’s ambitious if overlong latest (after Legends of the North Cascades) tells the stories of a train’s passengers and their ancestors after a disastrous crash. In 2019, veteran conductor Walter Bergen embarks from Portland, Ore., to Seattle, his concluding journey on the Amtrak payroll. Estranged from his family for decades, Bergen is a uncomplicated train-loving man who adores his wife Annie, and is also, as shown in one of the novel’s many descriptive passages set in the mid-19th century, a descendant of Chicago Irish twin orphans. Malik, a passenger and a young basketball celebrity heading toward a prized invitational, is a descendent of an enslaved person. After the educate crashes, Malik pleads with Walter to help his injured mother. There’s also Jenny, a corporate consultant and descendent of Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs; and Laila, a Native American, who is fleeing an abusive husband. While some of the historical details and the characters’ relationships to one another feel a bit scattered, Evison’s depiction of the characters’ family histories builds significance as contemporary racial inequalities and clas
SMALL WORLD
William DeMeritt narrates this mosaic of a novel, which ties together the 19th-century ancestors of 21st-century characters who are headed for a instruct disaster. DeMeritt masterfully paces the intertwining stories with a keen sense of drama, smoothly takes on the accents--Irish, English, German, Southern, and adeptly voices the remarkable characters, a pastiche of Americans including a robber baron, an immigrant, an enslaved person, and a Native. Evison has written a love song to bygone America, especially the nation's railroads, which changed our meaning of space and time. In sparkling prose rich with historical detail and contemporary insight, he shows how our past--the tough road for immigrants, the stain of slavery, and the deplorable treatment of Native Americans--influenced how we live now. An enthralling audiobook. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine [Published: JANUARY 2022]
Trade Ed. • Penguin Audio • 2022
DD ISBN 9780593452202 $25.00
Library Ed. • Books on Tape • 2022
DD ISBN 9780593452219 $95.00
Sinopse
A career´s work from a beloved author´s first book for Dutton, Small World is a historic epic set in multiple time periods, in which the characters interconnect in the most intriguing and meaningful ways. A New York Times Editor´s Choice! One of the LA Times´s 10 Books to Add to Your Reading List One of Book Culture´s Most Anticipated Reads “A bighearted, widescreen American tale.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred) “Masterpiece…the quintessential Great American Novel.”—Booklist (starred) “A vivid mosaic.”—BookPage (starred) Jonathan Evison’s Small World is an epic novel for now. Set against such iconic backdrops as the California gold rush, the development of the transcontinental railroad, and a speeding train of modern-day strangers forced together by fate, it is a grand entertainment that asks big questions. The characters of Small World connect in the most intriguing and meaningful ways, winning, breaking, and winning our hearts again. In exploring the passengers’ lives and those of their ancestors more than a century before, Small World chronicles 170 years of American nation-building from numerous points of view across place and time. And it doe
Small World is a huge, ambitious, but incredibly immersive Great American novel about how we're all connected in striving for the Great American Dream. A vast cast of diverse characters both in the present and in the 19th century populate this novel with interconnected stories about how beating injustice and flourishing in this Great American Experiment is at its essence a team sport.
So as a instruct speeds through a snowy evening in Oregon, several passengers on this train are connected in ways they couldn't possibly understand. A mom trying to deliver her basketball prodigy son a leg up. A woman escaping her abusive boyfriend. A family making a huge change in their lives. And the prepare engineer, on his last jog before retirement. We get the stories of each of these people, but as importantly, we get the story of the 19th century ancestors of each of these people. An enslaved person who escapes in Illinois. Irish immigrant twins who experiment to make their ways in Chicago and then the