Pulitzer Prize Finalist: “Something like Huckleberry Finn written by Cormac McCarthy: an adventure story as well as a meditation on the meaning of home.”—The Times Winner of the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. … young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels East in search of his brother, from whom he was separated in the crowds and chaos during their journey across the sea. Moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing West, he is driven back again and again, meeting naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, swindlers, Indians, and lawmen—and his exploits turn him into a legend.
Just as its hero pushes against the tide, this widely acclaimed novel defies genre conventions—and “upends the romance and mythology of America’s Western experience and rugged individualism” (Star Tribune).
“Suspenseful…a memorable immigration narrative, and a canny reinvention of the old-school western.”—Publishers Weekly
“Exquisite: assured, moving, and masterful, as profound and precise an evocation of loneliness as any book I’ve ever read.” —Lauren Groff, National Book Award-nominated author of Florida and Fates and Furies
more
My curiosity led me through this book. The characters were enthralling and the hero a man to reckon with, admire, and feel compassion for. “In the Distance” brings a new sense of urgency to the library of historical fiction.
It was a good and unusual Western yarn, if you like that kind of story line.
I had to skip a lot because the descriptions went on for pages. It was very sad.
Exquisite: assured, moving, and masterful, as profound and precise an evocation of loneliness as any book I’ve ever read.
If you like gray, depressing, repetitive and pointless this is the book for you. You don’t often see an author reuse complete descriptions over. Sometimes I thought I had backtracked my kindle accidentally.
It is not a stretch of comparison to put Diaz’s extraordinary novel In the Distance alongside McCarthy’s masterpiece Blood Meridian. Diaz’s wizardry of phrasings and his vivid descriptions of the natural landscape are reminiscent of McCarthy. And similar to McCarthy, Diaz spins a mesmerizing tale of adventure and survival. Neither does Diaz shy away from violence, but he has the ability like McCarthy to take harrowing incidents and through the use of spellbinding imagery turn the horrors of brutality into moments of unsettling beauty.
Håkan (also known as the “Hawk”) is Diaz’s unforgettable hero. A giant-sized man, Håkan is a Swedish immigrant to America. Shortly after he arrives on the California coast, he becomes separated from his brother Linus. Håkan hopes to cross the treacherous deserts and rugged mountains of the west and track his course east to reunite with Linus in their preplanned destination of New York City. Håkan’s journey, however, becomes one struggle after another, eventually leading him to choose a life of solitude and reclusion in a mountain hideout.
Diaz conducts a fascinating study on human isolation and the hardships of the immigrant experience. He explores the phenomenon in which events and persons become mythologized and how truth and reality become distorted. His narrative is as much a story of triumph over suffering as it is a philosophical treatise on the mystery of existence, the wonder of science, and the human inclinations for both evil and good. In much the same way that McCarthy creates a hypnotic atmosphere of solemnity through immersive settings and disturbing scenes, Diaz has created a realistic world of the past that simultaneously feels otherworldly.
This book kept me turning the pages to find out what would happen next. It is realistic, yet very unusual. It is a story that stays in your mind even after you’ve read the last page. Was the adventure one that could have happened in the Old West? It makes you wonder.
Incredible writing – it is a story of a Scandinavian man in search of his brother, after landing in new york city and heading west in the 1850s – it is part dreamscape and a realistically scarred picture of a man controlled by fate and circumstance while continuing on his search for connection and meaning.
This is the most captivating novel I have read this year. I can not stop thinking about it and highly recommend it!