King Brilliant

Ed King is ----King Brilliant! I have never read anything by David Guterson (he of Snow Falling on Cedars fame) and had always assumed he wrote soft, desolate, beautiful, thoughtful books. I think this assumption was based purely on the title of Snow Falling on Cedars, which sounds like a line from a haiku poem. Well, it turns out that Guterson writes sassy, tight, clever shit. Who knew? (probably everybody except me).


What I found most particularly brilliant was the final denouement, which is stretched out over a tense 50 or more pages. The reader knows the ending, (even before reading the book, as it is on the blurb) but waiting for the characters themselves to discover it is excruuutiating!!

... I wonder what this dude (formerly of the band Lynard Skynard) thinks of the fact that there is now a book with his name as the title? ...

It was a book that made me think about genetics, the meaning of family, technology's role in our lives... but it wasn't a 300 page lecture, it was a great, nuanced, story.