Tim Johnston
Auteur de Descent
A propos de l'auteur
Tim Johnston was born in Iowa City. He attended and graduated from the University of Iowa and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was the 2011 Jeny McKean Moore Writer -in Residence at the George Washington University. His stories have appeared in California Quarterly, Double Take, Best afficher plus Life Magazine, The Iowa Review and Narrative Magazine. Irish Girl won an O. Henry Prize, the New Letters Award for Writers. The collection won the 2009 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. His other works include Two Years and Never So Green. In 2015 his title, Descent made The New York Times Best Seller List. (Bowker Author Biography) afficher moins
Crédit image: Tim Johnston
Œuvres de Tim Johnston
Oeuvres associées
The Algonquin Reader: Fall 2014 — Contributeur — 2 exemplaires
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Date de naissance
- alive
- Sexe
- male
- Nationalité
- USA
- Lieu de naissance
- Iowa City, Iowa, USA
- Lieux de résidence
- Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Membres
Critiques
Listes
Prix et récompenses
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Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 10
- Aussi par
- 3
- Membres
- 1,348
- Popularité
- #19,089
- Évaluation
- 3.7
- Critiques
- 136
- ISBN
- 39
- Langues
- 3
- Favoris
- 2
I was in the mood for a good plot driven novel and when I saw an online ad for this one it seemed like a perfect fit: female runner goes missing and what happens next. I should have known from the start that I was in for a bumpy ride because I was immediately uncomfortable with the way the characters were referred to as "the boy" and "the girl" from the start. The characters have names...use them!
The concept of what happens to a family after one of them goes missing is a really interesting one. The tension it brings to a marriage, the feelings of guilt for all those involved, the pain of wondering where the missing person is and is she alive or dead. The Descent tries to tackle that but it is in such a disjointed way that I never felt any compassion for these people. In some cases, like with the Mother figure, I couldn't even follow what was happening in some chapters towards the end. There was also a heavy presence of cigarettes in the book. I felt like there was so much discussion about the characters smoking that it would eventually have some bearing on the plot but it never did.
The introduction of a bad guy to the story felt heavy handed and what happened next veered into territory that just made me want to throw the book across the room. The action ratchets up a lot in the last quarter of the book but in a way that felt both thrown together and generally ridiculous.
Do not recommend.
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