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Lunch » Tags » Book » Reviews » Evening

Evening

1 rating: 5.0

A book by Susan Minot

As Ann Lord lies on her deathbed, her daughter delivers a balsam pillow from the attic. At first the ailing woman is confused, but suddenly the scent reminds her of the "wild tumult" she experienced 40 years earlier:Something stole into her as she walked … see full wiki

Tags: Book

Author: Susan Minot

Publisher: Vintage

1 review about Evening

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Cascade of Memories

Jun 25, 2006

by GlassIsland
posted in Cafe Libri: Reviewing Books & More

Rating:

This may be the saddest book I've ever read. Even so, I'm so glad I read it.

I had a strange experience when I finished 'Evening'. After closing the book I dozed off, and dreamt of reading the last few pages over and over again, looking for a different ending. Even though the ending did seem to change a little every time I re-read it, it was never satisfying, never what I wanted to happen. Upon waking, I was still sad, but I realized that even though the book doesn't end the way I might have wanted it to, it ends the way it has to. It's an honest and true ending, and it was done right all the way to the last page.

It is Minot's honesty, her willingness to delve into the dangerous territory of human realtionships without flinching, and her ability to do it without resorting to cliche or overt romanticism that keeps me coming back to her work. In 'Rapture' it was the on-again, off-again affair between a man and a woman and the different ways they saw it. In 'Monkeys' it was the fractured, disjointed relationships in a large family, looked at over the years. And here, in 'Evening' it is the life story of one woman, Ann Grant, how she sees it in her memory, and the love long past that she still holds closest to her heart after three marriages and five children and all the events that filled her life.

In 'Evening' perhaps the most powerful element is how memories come and go in Ann's dying mind. The memories (and thus the story structure) are not linear or even very organized very much at all. Sometimes they trickle in and sometimes they gush in an unstoppable flow. Sometimes their direction is clear and others they eddy and whorl and mix together in unpredictable ways. To represent this, Minot allows the story to flow in like Ann's memories of her life, jumping from present-day on her deathbed to memories of a wedding weekend years ago to memories of a one of her husbands...sometimes these are clearly delineated in easy prose and others they blur together in a rush of words, like poetry. The representation of memory in 'Evening' is astonishing in its beauty and breathtaking in how well it shows understanding of how we remember things.

As always, and perhaps even moreso than usual, Minot's use of language in 'Evening' is spare and lovely to read, expressive but never overdone. She shows a keen observation for what motivates people, and is able to put it into words that let anyone understand it. Her perspective is unique in many ways, but universal in the most important ones.

Simply put, 'Evening' is a great novel by a great writer. Before reading it, I already had high expectations for it, as Minot is a writer I have come to appreciate and respect and expect great things from. That she managed to exceed my expectations still, and leave me thoughtful and so sad at the end of the book, is a true testament to her gift and to how she put it to use here.

'Evening' is a book about love, but it is also about how fragile our memories are, and how they rarely come to us in a linear, easy-to-follow fashion. To understand our memories, you have to also understand our lives...and that is the gift Susan Minot gives to us.

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