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(More customer reviews)Sigh. Who has time for the epics anymore? Not a college student, it would seem. "Read?" most scoff. "I haven't got time, what with my busy schedule, for a short story, let alone a big book that reaches nearly 700 pages in length."
Still, somewhere out there is the rare reader who likes the challenge an epic presents, loves to get lost in fascinating, multi-layered characterizations and plots that expand over decades.
For those readers, there is David James Duncan's 1992 offering, "The Brothers K." It excels on all those fronts I just mentioned, and on several more.
But when a friend recently handed it over to me, suggesting that I take a look, I too balked at its size:
"Look at it! Are you trying to kill any semblance of a social life I may have? This thing is mammoth and unwieldy!"
But my friend was persistent and so I went home and took a look. And soon became lost in the words, the story, the characters.
"Brothers K" is about the Chance family. Father Hugh is a mill worker who used to be the most promising baseball player around, until an accident at the mill cost him his dream. Mother Laura clings obsessively to her Adventist religion, since it once protected her from the darkest hour of her past.
Together, they have four boys and two twin girls. Everett is the oldest, a charming, witty rogue who doesn't share Laura's faith. Peter is next, and is a fellow cynic. Irwin is the large and innocent third child. Kincaid is a blank slate, who serves as the readers' eyes in the guise of the book's narrator.
The twin girls, Bet and Freddy, come later and more or less fulfill the role of younger sisters to the four brothers and little else, although they have a heartbreaking scene involving their grandmother's death that paves the way for the story to come full circle later.
Those are the characters. There is a plot, but Duncan takes it so lackadaisically and slow across the sands of time that in essence it can all be summed up in one word: Lifetime. For this is very much the saga of the Chance family, and all of their adventures therein.
We literally see the Chance boys grow up before our very eyes, watch as their characters age and grow, or regress, experience life and flirt with death.
Around halfway through the book, the four brothers (the "K" is an allusion to "The Brothers Karamazov," by Fyodor Dostoyevsky) each go off in search of their own way; Everett becomes a draft-dodger, Peter a philosopher, Kincaid a hippie, and Irwin goes to fight in Vietnam.
There is no rush on Duncan's part to tell the story, and so there can be no rush from the reader to finish it.
For this is a book in which the getting there is very much the draw, and readers are rewarded their patience by Duncan's sense of humor, sometimes gentle, other times abrasive, many times subtle and always hilarious.
But if you're the sort who seeks immediate gratification and "lite" escape from your reading, "Brothers K" is told in a series of broken up chapters and chapters-within-chapters, making it easier to simply pick it up, read a section or two and then return to whatever else you were doing.
If you can, that is. It's a hypnotic, intoxicating read, which will make putting the book down difficult.
And when you finally do finish, if you're like me, you will be so moved from the whole experience you will have to leave the room and walk the book off. It's that good.
Upon returning to your room, of course, there will be the brand-new temptation to pick it up and start all over again.
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