Review by Booklist Review
In this exploration of the long reaches of the Vietnam War, Roorbach attempts to understand the past by answering Delmore Schwarz's poetic question, "What am I now that I was then?" Protagonist Coop Henry, a trainer with the U.S. Olympic Ski Team, feels himself to be at the end of a very bad run. Henry is living a lie. For 30 years, he has hidden from his parents the fact that his older brother, who vanished in 1969 to dodge the draft, is not still alive and in hiding but has been long dead--"and worse." What that "worse" is forms the chief question of the book, which scuttles between a third-person account of the Henry family in 1969 and Coop's diarylike conversations with his dead brother. The effect, for the reader, of listening in on Coop's confessions and glimpsing his tortured consciousness is both unsettling and powerful. A compelling coming-of-middle-age novel. --Connie Fletcher
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Roorbach has quietly built a stellar reputation based on short fiction (Big Bend, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award) and nonfiction (Writing Life Stories; Summers with Juliet), but has escaped wider notice perhaps because he hadn't produced a novel. Now he has, and it's a good one. Coop Henry is a former Olympic skier, a man steering his way through what most would call a good life he's a coach with the U.S. Ski Team; has a smart, beautiful wife, Madeline; and lives along a Colorado river straight out of a magazine spread. Problem is, the hazy days of the late '60s keep coming back to him, especially the summer of 1969, when Coop was 15 and his older brother, Hodge, an underground radical, disappeared forever. Coop knows that Hodge is dead, but exactly how that death occurred overwhelms Coop with the past, even as his current life disintegrates. Complicating things, he has kept the news of Hodge's death from his parents for 30 years, telling them that Hodge is hiding from the FBI. It's hard to know who's a better creation: Coop, a thoughtful man in search of wholeness, or Hodge, all charisma and violence, "someone who'd get in bed with your girl." Roorbach is equally at home among the ski bums of the present day and the hippie bums of a previous era, especially those who wanted to "Stop the War" by starting their own. This is a piercing novel, one that perfectly captures the seismic upheaval of the end of the '60s. (Oct.) Forecast: A long list of blurbers Colin Harrison, Rick Moody, Richard Russo, Antonya Nelson and Melanie Rae Thon among them attests to Roorbach's popularity in literary circles. His first novel may win him a wider popular readership. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Coop Henry is a champion skier, a complacent husband settling into middle age, and a son burdened by a terrible secret: 30 years ago, at the height of the Vietnam War, Coop's older brother Hodge disappeared after bombing an airplane factory. Coop has told everyone that his brother is dead, but his parents suspect that Hodge is alive and are demanding to see him before their 50th wedding anniversary celebration. Only Coop and his wife, Madeline, know what really happened, and they have sworn never to reveal the truth. The burden of the secret threatens Coop's marriage, costs him a plum job as U.S. Ski Team coach, strains his relationship with his parents, and complicates a budding romance with a younger woman. Author of an award-winning short-story collection, Big Bend, and two works of nonfiction, Roorbach deftly weaves together Coop's past and present lives in alternating chapters as he remembers the summer of 1969, his own teenage rebellion against his parents, and his lingering feelings of guilt over his role in the events that led to his brother's vanishing. This first novel brilliantly and compassionately recalls the turbulence of the Sixties as well as the violent yet idealistic fringes of the antiwar movement. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries. Karen Anderson, Quarles & Brady/Streich Lang, Phoenix (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Roorbach (Summers with Juliet, 1992, etc.) effectively juggles a number of themes in a slyly composed whodunit that's also a paean to burying the bones of the past. Superficially, Coop Henry has an enviable life. A former Olympic bronze medalist, he now coaches the US ski team and seems happily married to the formidable Madeline. But Coop is haunted by the events of 1969, the year his older brother Hodge died. Compounding his grief is his inability to openly mourn; Coop has spent the last 30 years claiming that Hodge is still alive and living underground as a fugitive. His deception, and the reasons for it, may soon be uncovered, as Coop's parents have hired wily p.i. Tad Czako in a last-ditch effort to find their favorite son. With the imminent revelation of his secret, memories encroach upon the present to leave Coop contemplating a life built on his brother's death. He begins an affair with Roddy, a skier who's already engaged, he assaults clerks at a hardware store and temporarily lands in a mental-health facility, and he very may well lose his coaching position. As his life crumbles, he's transported back to that fateful summer when he searched for his brother, already involved in terrorist activities. Here Roorbach builds an engaging portrait of the '60s, its free-love and drug experiments, the naive innocence of some and the restless violence of others. Coop's on-the-road adventure leads him to Tricia, a Montana cowgirl and brilliant poet, and soon the two are in Chicago, where they find Hodge and his co-conspirators. The bombing of a Boeing plant in Seattle lands the teenage revolutionaries in a mountain retreat awaiting capture. Roorbach's quasi-mystery (what really happened to Hodge?) works well as a device in explicating Coop's current life choices, creating a fast-paced portrait of the fate of '60s radicalism. Well-drawn characters and a topical theme make this a lively read.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
