Finn: A Novel

In this masterful debut by a major new voice in fiction, Jon Clinch takes us on a journey into the history and heart of one of American literature's most brutal and mysterious figures: Huckleberry Finn's father. The result is a deeply original tour de force that springs from Twain's classic novel but takes on a fully realized life of its own.

Finn sets a tragic figure loose in a landscape at once familiar and mythic. It begins and ends with a lifeless body — flayed and stripped of all identifying marks — drifting down the Mississippi. The circumstances of the murder, and the secret of the victim's identity, shape Finn's story as they will shape his life and his death.

Along the way Clinch introduces a cast of unforgettable characters: Finn's terrifying father, known only as the Judge; his sickly, sycophantic brother, Will; blind Bliss, a secretive moonshiner; the strong and quick-witted Mary, a stolen slave who becomes Finn's mistress; and of course young Huck himself. In daring to re-create Huck for a new generation, Clinch gives us a living boy in all his human complexity — not an icon, not a myth, but a real child facing vast possibilities in a world alternately dangerous and bright.

Finn is a novel about race; about paternity in its many guises; about the shame of a nation recapitulated by the shame of one absolutely unforgettable family. Above all, Finn reaches back into the darkest waters of America's past to fashion something compelling, fearless, and new.

"In this darkly luminous debut, Finn, the namesake of the title, is not Twain's illustrious Huck, but Huck's father, 'Pap.' As the novel opens, an African-American woman's bloated corpse floats downriver from Lasseter, Ill., toward the slave territory of St. Petersburg, Mo. In the Lasseter woods, Finn — a dangerous, bigoted drunk — tells his blind bootlegger friend, Bliss, that he's finally 'quit' his on-again, off-again African-American companion Mary, the mother of Finn's second son (also, confusingly, named Huck). Chronically short on money, Finn is shunned by his father (Adams County Judge James Manchester Finn) and by his brother, Will. Finn does odd jobs, traps catfish and claims tutelary rights to Huckleberry's share of Injun Joe's gold. (In this last, he is thwarted by Widow Douglas and Judge Thatcher, high-handed and stifling as ever.) The opaque in medias res narrative then backs up to detail Finn and Mary's life together: his drinking, his stint in the penitentiary following an assault (sentenced by his own father), Mary's rising debts and Finn's attempts at restitution. As the nature of the woman's murder becomes clear, Clinch lyrically renders the Mississippi River's ceaseless flow, while revealing Finn's brutal contradictions, his violence, arrogance and self-reproach. If Clinch's debut falls short of Twain's achievement, it does further Twain's fiction." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Early in 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,' the boys in Tom Sawyer's gang pledge to kill the families of any member who reveals their secrets. But one of them objects that Huck 'hain't got no family.''Well, hain't he got a father?' asks Tom Sawyer. 'Yes, he's a got a father, but you can't never find him.' Until now. Jon Clinch's haunting first novel not only finds Pap, but in the life of this violent... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) alcoholic it finds the spirit of a nation torn apart by conflicting racial passions. Clinch, who runs an advertising agency in Philadelphia, relies on Twain's details, sometimes borrowing whole scenes and patches of dialogue, but he reorders the characters completely, setting that eager little boy and his unconscious irony far into the background and forcing us to concentrate instead on the anguished man who sired him. Admittedly, part of the dark thrill here is 'finding out' the back story that fans of 'Huckleberry Finn' have long wondered about — Who would ever have had a child with Pap? How did he end up naked and dead on that floating house? — but this isn't just a creative appendix to an American classic. Clinch reimagines Finn in a strikingly original way, replacing Huck's voice with his own magisterial vision — one that's nothing short of revelatory. The novel begins, as such a story must, on the Mississippi River, that incalculably powerful current that's both cradle and grave, giving life across 2,000 miles while carrying away the nation's detritus and death: 'Under a low sun, pursued by fish and mounted by crows and veiled in a loud languid swarm of bluebottle flies, the body comes down the river like a deadfall stripped clean.' A series of horrors glide into this story just like that: slowly, often beautifully, letting us catch the scent of evil before we suddenly see it. This body in the opening paragraph continues its graceful passage down the river on a glorious morning, until it's spotted by boys 'inured to dead things.' It's a woman, but she won't be identified. Before tossing her in the river, Huck Finn's father carefully cut away all her skin. Skin is an obsession with Finn, as it is for the rest of his country, and the tragedy of how he came to love and murder Huck's black mother is the spellbinding story that unravels in this novel. Yes, Huck is half black — a daring invention, to be sure, but also a brilliant embodiment of the liminal spot in which he lives, that chaotic Missouri boundary between freedom and slavery. Twain never suggested that Huck is a mulatto, but 'Finn' cleverly explains the mystery of Huck's mother in perfect harmony with Twain's original. Clinch's real interest, though, is a deeply flawed, dangerous man who lurches for redemption between actions so vile he can't sleep. From the opening discovery of the murdered woman, the story moves backward and forward in alternating chapters that reflect Finn's tangled relationship with the past. Night after night, deep in the woods, drinking with a blind moonshiner, Finn ruminates 'upon the course of his life and the various hurtful influences upon it and how they have conspired to bring him to such a sad destination as this.' Clinch never absolves him, but Finn comes from a family that would send anybody to the bottle. His mother is a bitter, dissatisfied woman. His father, known to everyone as the Judge, is an unyielding, loveless man who projects an enervating aura of disapproval. Disgusted with Finn's lack of interest in academics, the Judge consigns his son to a shack behind the barn, and there he might have spent the rest of his life, contentedly fishing and hunting and catching odd jobs, had he not come into possession of a young slave named Mary. This impossibly complicated relationship is the heart of the novel and a testament to Clinch's sensitivity, his willingness to trace the threads of passion no matter where they lead. Naturally, Finn thinks of Mary as his property; he keeps her locked in his shack and orders her to cook and clean for him and eventually sleep with him. But he also appreciates her on a higher level that has no sanction in this racist society. Finn senses that 'there is about her a grace and an ineffable sadness that conspire to retard her movements and make them thereby into something almost musical, transforming every act into a kind of prayer or languorous meditation.' They fall into the habits of an old married couple. Despite 'his shameful devotion,' 'his own untoward preferences in women,' Finn eventually defends her with his life — and even kills for her. 'He is faithful to her,' Clinch writes, 'as to nothing else in this world,' and she cares for him in return, without ever losing sight of the precarious nature of her position. When baby Huck comes along, the three of them, though desperately poor and completely outcast, seem genuinely content. But try as he might, Finn is too weak, too proud and finally too racist to preserve what he later recalls as 'the old paradisiacal days in his cabin.' And that's the real curse that Clinch describes so powerfully: Finn is fully aware of what he's lost. 'He is tormented to distraction by a kind of desperate unholy vigor,' Clinch writes, 'by the inescapable conviction that he has abandoned something that he must now restore unto himself.' It's a poignant echo of Huck's description of his father in 'Huckleberry Finn:' 'A body would a thought he was Adam — he was just all mud.' And what, Clinch asks with unblinking honesty and sympathy, is an angry, remorseful man of mud to do with himself? In one of the novel's most frightening, incantatory scenes, a grotesque allusion to 'Tom Sawyer,' Finn madly whitewashes the entire interior of his shack — the walls, the floor, the windows, everything — desperate to be white, to be clean, to be pure, to cover the blood. But no sooner has it dried than he's drawing on those walls with the grime of his own fingers, creating a vast canvas 'of his urge and of his longing and of his despair over the fate of his poor doomed immortal soul.' Here, trapped in a squatter's shack hanging precariously over the river, is the madness of a whole country that will soon tear itself apart in a war over race. Twain had a grim side, too, of course, but throughout much of his career, he was constrained by writing for the young boys' market. While working on Huckleberry Finn, he wrote in his journal, 'I can't say, 'They cut his head off, or stabbed him, etc' describe the blood; the agony in his face.' A decade later, already troubled by the depression that would eventually overtake him, he told a friend that he couldn't write all the things he wanted to: 'They would require ... a pen warmed up in hell.' I don't know where Jon Clinch has been, but with 'Finn,' he's grabbed hold of that searing pen." Ron Charles, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)

"Early in 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,' the boys in Tom Sawyer's gang pledge to kill the families of any member who reveals their secrets. But one of them objects that Huck 'hain't got no family.'

'Well, hain't he got a father?' asks Tom Sawyer.

'Yes, he's a got a father, but you can't never find him.'

Until now.

Jon Clinch's haunting... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) first novel not only finds Pap, but in the life of this violent alcoholic it finds the spirit of a nation torn apart by conflicting racial passions. Clinch, who runs an advertising agency in Philadelphia, relies on Twain's details, sometimes borrowing whole scenes and patches of dialogue, but he reorders the characters completely, setting that eager little boy and his unconscious irony far into the background and forcing us to concentrate instead on the anguished man who sired him. Admittedly, part of the dark thrill here is 'finding out' the back story that fans of 'Huckleberry Finn' have long wondered about — Who would ever have had a child with Pap? How did he end up naked and dead on that floating house? — but this isn't just a creative appendix to an American classic. Clinch reimagines Finn in a strikingly original way, replacing Huck's voice with his own magisterial vision — one that's nothing short of revelatory.

The novel begins, as such a story must, on the Mississippi River, that incalculably powerful current that's both cradle and grave, giving life across 2,000 miles while carrying away the nation's detritus and death: 'Under a low sun, pursued by fish and mounted by crows and veiled in a loud languid swarm of bluebottle flies, the body comes down the river like a deadfall stripped clean.' A series of horrors glide into this story just like that: slowly, often beautifully, letting us catch the scent of evil before we suddenly see it. This body in the opening paragraph continues its graceful passage down the river on a glorious morning, until it's spotted by boys 'inured to dead things.' It's a woman, but she won't be identified. Before tossing her in the river, Huck Finn's father carefully cut away all her skin.

Skin is an obsession with Finn, as it is for the rest of his country, and the tragedy of how he came to love and murder Huck's black mother is the spellbinding story that unravels in this novel.

Yes, Huck is half black — a daring invention, to be sure, but also a brilliant embodiment of the liminal spot in which he lives, that chaotic Missouri boundary between freedom and slavery. Twain never suggested that Huck is a mulatto, but 'Finn' cleverly explains the mystery of Huck's mother in perfect harmony with Twain's original. Clinch's real interest, though, is a deeply flawed, dangerous man who lurches for redemption between actions so vile he can't sleep.

From the opening discovery of the murdered woman, the story moves backward and forward in alternating chapters that reflect Finn's tangled relationship with the past. Night after night, deep in the woods, drinking with a blind moonshiner, Finn ruminates 'upon the course of his life and the various hurtful influences upon it and how they have conspired to bring him to such a sad destination as this.' Clinch never absolves him, but Finn comes from a family that would send anybody to the bottle. His mother is a bitter, dissatisfied woman. His father, known to everyone as the Judge, is an unyielding, loveless man who projects an enervating aura of disapproval. Disgusted with Finn's lack of interest in academics, the Judge consigns his son to a shack behind the barn, and there he might have spent the rest of his life, contentedly fishing and hunting and catching odd jobs, had he not come into possession of a young slave named Mary.

This impossibly complicated relationship is the heart of the novel and a testament to Clinch's sensitivity, his willingness to trace the threads of passion no matter where they lead. Naturally, Finn thinks of Mary as his property; he keeps her locked in his shack and orders her to cook and clean for him and eventually sleep with him. But he also appreciates her on a higher level that has no sanction in this racist society. Finn senses that 'there is about her a grace and an ineffable sadness that conspire to retard her movements and make them thereby into something almost musical, transforming every act into a kind of prayer or languorous meditation.' They fall into the habits of an old married couple. Despite 'his shameful devotion,' 'his own untoward preferences in women,' Finn eventually defends her with his life — and even kills for her. 'He is faithful to her,' Clinch writes, 'as to nothing else in this world,' and she cares for him in return, without ever losing sight of the precarious nature of her position. When baby Huck comes along, the three of them, though desperately poor and completely outcast, seem genuinely content.

But try as he might, Finn is too weak, too proud and finally too racist to preserve what he later recalls as 'the old paradisiacal days in his cabin.' And that's the real curse that Clinch describes so powerfully: Finn is fully aware of what he's lost. 'He is tormented to distraction by a kind of desperate unholy vigor,' Clinch writes, 'by the inescapable conviction that he has abandoned something that he must now restore unto himself.' It's a poignant echo of Huck's description of his father in 'Huckleberry Finn:' 'A body would a thought he was Adam — he was just all mud.' And what, Clinch asks with unblinking honesty and sympathy, is an angry, remorseful man of mud to do with himself?

In one of the novel's most frightening, incantatory scenes, a grotesque allusion to 'Tom Sawyer,' Finn madly whitewashes the entire interior of his shack — the walls, the floor, the windows, everything — desperate to be white, to be clean, to be pure, to cover the blood. But no sooner has it dried than he's drawing on those walls with the grime of his own fingers, creating a vast canvas 'of his urge and of his longing and of his despair over the fate of his poor doomed immortal soul.' Here, trapped in a squatter's shack hanging precariously over the river, is the madness of a whole country that will soon tear itself apart in a war over race.

Twain had a grim side, too, of course, but throughout much of his career, he was constrained by writing for the young boys' market. While working on 'Huckleberry Finn,' he wrote in his journal, 'I can't say, `They cut his head off, or stabbed him, etc' describe the blood & the agony in his face.' A decade later, already troubled by the depression that would eventually overtake him, he told a friend that he couldn't write all the things he wanted to: 'They would require ... a pen warmed up in hell.' I don't know where Jon Clinch has been, but with 'Finn,' he's grabbed hold of that searing pen.

Ron Charles is a senior editor of The Washington Post Book World.

" Reviewed by Reza AslanMartin van CreveldFlora FraserRon Charles, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)

"[A] ravishing first novel....In the saga of this tormented human being, Clinch brings us a radical (and endlessly debatable) new take on Twain's classic, and a stand-alone marvel of a novel. (Grade: A)" Entertainment Weekly

"[A] bold debut that takes a few tentative steps in tandem with the familiar Twain, but then veers off dexterously down a much more insidious, harrowing path." Booklist

"Despite needlessly confusing chronology, a memorable debut, likely to make waves." Kirkus Reviews

"Every fan of Twain's masterpiece will want to read this inspired spin-off, which could become an unofficial companion volume." Library Journal

"Jon Clinch has staked himself to a stiff challenge in his debut novel: casting Mark Twain's monstrous creation Pap Finn...as a leading man. The resulting book is dark and often gripping, though marred by stylistic excess and a shortage of pathos." Steve Almond, Los Angeles Times

"[A] brave and ambitious debut novel inspired by Mark Twain's masterpiece....Finn is a triumph of imagination and graceful writing. It's a puzzle built on clues that Twain left at Pap Finn's murder scene." USA Today

"Finn can certainly be read on its own, but the real pleasure lies in reading the two books together....Clinch admits the distance between that which we know and dare acknowledge of the human condition, and that which we can only shudder to imagine. San Francisco Chronicle

"Clinch's novel doesn't have the magical quality that Twain's masterpiece did, and at times it is a bit confusing....Overall, though, Clinch offers a unique perspective of one of the most hideous of characters in classic fiction and does so with a brave new twist." Denver Post

"Has Clinch paid homage or dishonored Twain by appropriating his characters for his own purpose? Readers will have their own answers, but anyone who encounters Finn will long be haunted by this dark and bloody tale." Hartford Courant

"Clinch is a talented writer who crafts many gripping scenes in Finn....But it must also be said that as a novelist, he manages to undercut his own effectiveness with some overloaded sentences, lit-crit phrasing and strained syntax, making choices of language that are jarring." Chicago Tribune

In this masterful debut by a major new voice in fiction, Jon Clinch takes us on a journey into the history and heart of one of American literature's most brutal and mysterious figures: Huckleberry Finn's father. The result is a deeply original tour de force that springs from Twain's classic novel but takes on a fully realized life of its own.

Finn sets a tragic figure loose in a landscape at once familiar and mythic. It begins and ends with a lifeless body-flayed and stripped of all identifying marks-drifting down the Mississippi. The circumstances of the murder, and the secret of the victim's identity, shape Finn's story as they will shape his life and his death.

Along the way Clinch introduces a cast of unforgettable characters: Finn's terrifying father, known only as the Judge; his sickly, sycophantic brother, Will; blind Bliss, a secretive moonshiner; the strong and quick-witted Mary, a stolen slave who becomes Finn's mistress; and of course young Huck himself. In daring to re-create Huck for a new generation, Clinch gives us a living boy in all his human complexity-not an icon, not a myth, but a real child facing vast possibilities in a world alternately dangerous and bright.

Finn is a novel about race; about paternity in its many guises; about the shame of a nation recapitulated by the shame of one absolutely unforgettable family. Above all, Finn reaches back into the darkest waters of America's past to fashion something compelling, fearless, and new.

Praise for Finn

A brave and ambitious debut novel... It stands on its own while giving new life and meaning to Twain's novel, which has been stirring passions and debates since 1885... triumph of imagination and graceful writing.... Bookstores and libraries shelve novels alphabetically by authors' names. That leaves Clinch a long way from Twain. But on my bookshelves, they'll lean against each other. I'd like to think that the cantankerous Twain would welcome the company.

-USA TODAY

Ravishing...In the saga of this tormented human being, Clinch brings us a radical (and endlessly debatable) new take on Twain's classic, and a stand-alone marvel of a novel. Grade: A.

-ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

A fascinating, original read.

-people

Haunting...Clinch reimagines Finn in a strikingly original way, replacing Huck's voice with his own magisterial vision-one that's nothing short of revelatory...Spellbinding.

-WASHINGTON POST

Meticulously crafted...Marvelous imagination...The Finn of Clinch's novel is certainly a racist villain but also psychologically disturbed and disconcertingly compelling.

-SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

From the barest of hints in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Clinch has created a fully believable world inhabited by fully realized characters. Clinch treads dangerous ground in making one of America's greatest novels his jumping-off point, but he brings it off magnificently...The language of this book is one of its great beauties...Finn is far from one-dimensional, and that is another beauty of the book. Clinch has a knack for putting us squarely inside the heads of his characters....Clinch draws as compelling and realistic a picture as any we're likely to find...Finn stands on its own. The richness of its language, the depth of its characters, the emotional and societal tangles through which they struggle to navigate add up to a portrait of life on the Mississippi as we've never before experienced it.

-dallas morning news

His models may include Cormac McCarthy, and Charles Frazier, whose Cold Mountain also has a voice that sounds like 19th-century American (both formal and colloquial) but has a contemporary terseness and spikiness. This voice couldn't be better suited to a historical novel with a modernist sensibility: Clinch's riverbank Missouri feels postapocalyptic, and his Pap Finn is a crazed yet wily survivor in a polluted landscape...Clinch's Pap is a convincingly nightmarish extrapolation of Twain's. He's the mad, lost and dangerous center of a world we'd hate to live in-or do we still live there?-and crave to revisit as soon as we close the book.

-newsweek

I haven't been swallowed whole by a work of fiction in some time. Jon Clinch's first novel has done it: sucked me under like I was a rag doll thrown into the wake of a Mississippi steamboat...Jon Clinch has turned in a nearly perfect first book, a creative response that matches The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in intensity and tenacious soul-searching about racism. I wish I could write well enough to construct a dramatic, subtle and mysterious story out of careful, plodding and unromantic prose, but for now I'm just happy to have an alchemist like Jon Clinch do it for me.

-BOOKSLUT

Finn strikes its most original chords in its bold imagining of possibilities left unexplored by Huckleberry Finn.

-austin american-statesman

An inspired riff on one of literature's all-time great villains...This tale of fathers and sons, slavery and freedom, better angels at war with dark demons, is filled with passages of brilliant description, violence that is close-up and terrifying...Everything in this novel could have happened, and we believe it... so the great river of stories is too, twisting and turning, inspiring such surprising and inspired riffs and tributes as Finn.

-new orleans times-picayune

A triumph of succesful plotting, convincing characterization and lyrical prose.

-ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS

Shocking and charming. Clinch creates a folk-art masterpiece that will delight, beguile and entertain as it does justice to its predecessor...In Finn, Clinch expands the bloodlines and scope of the original story and casts new light on the troubled legacy of our country's infamous past.

-new york post

In Clinch's retelling, Pap Finn comes vibrantly to life as a complex, mysterious, strangely likable figure.

In this masterful debut by a major new voice in fiction, Jon Clinch takes us on a journey into the history and heart of one of American literature's most brutal and mysterious figures: Huckleberry Finn's father. The result is a deeply original tour de force that springs from Twain's classic novel but takes on a fully realized life of its own.

Finn sets a tragic figure loose in a landscape at once familiar and mythic. It begins and ends with a lifeless body-flayed and stripped of all identifying marks-drifting down the Mississippi. The circumstances of the murder, and the secret of the victim's identity, shape Finn's story as they will shape his life and his death.

Along the way Clinch introduces a cast of unforgettable characters: Finn's terrifying father, known only as the Judge; his sickly, sycophantic brother, Will; blind Bliss, a secretive moonshiner; the strong and quick-witted Mary, a stolen slave who becomes Finn's mistress; and of course young Huck himself. In daring to re-create Huck for a new generation, Clinch gives us a living boy in all his human complexity-not an icon, not a myth, but a real child facing vast possibilities in a world alternately dangerous and bright.

Finn is a novel about race; about paternity in its many guises; about the shame of a nation recapitulated by the shame of one absolutely unforgettable family. Above all, Finn reaches back into the darkest waters of America's past to fashion something compelling, fearless, and new.

Praise for Finn

A brave and ambitious debut novel... It stands on its own while giving new life and meaning to Twain's novel, which has been stirring passions and debates since 1885... triumph of imagination and graceful writing.... Bookstores and libraries shelve novels alphabetically by authors' names. That leaves Clinch a long way from Twain. But on my bookshelves, they'll lean against each other. I'd like to think that the cantankerous Twain would welcome the company.

-USA TODAY

Ravishing...In the saga of this tormented human being, Clinch brings us a radical (and endlessly debatable) new take on Twain's classic, and a stand-alone marvel of a novel. Grade: A.

-ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

A fascinating, original read.

-people

Haunting...Clinch reimagines Finn in a strikingly original way, replacing Huck's voice with his own magisterial vision-one that's nothing short of revelatory...Spellbinding.

-WASHINGTON POST

Meticulously crafted...Marvelous imagination...The Finn of Clinch's novel is certainly a racist villain but also psychologically disturbed and disconcertingly compelling.

-SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

From the barest of hints in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Clinch has created a fully believable world inhabited by fully realized characters. Clinch treads dangerous ground in making one of America's greatest novels his jumping-off point, but he brings it off magnificently...The language of this book is one of its great beauties...Finn is far from one-dimensional, and that is another beauty of the book. Clinch has a knack for putting us squarely inside the heads of his characters....Clinch draws as compelling and realistic a picture as any we're likely to find...Finn stands on its own. The richness of its language, the depth of its characters, the emotional and societal tangles through which they struggle to navigate add up to a portrait of life on the Mississippi as we've never before experienced it.

-dallas morning news

His models may include Cormac McCarthy, and Charles Frazier, whose Cold Mountain also has a voice that sounds like 19th-century American (both formal and colloquial) but has a contemporary terseness and spikiness. This voice couldn't be better suited to a historical novel with a modernist sensibility: Clinch's riverbank Missouri feels postapocalyptic, and his Pap Finn is a crazed yet wily survivor in a polluted landscape...Clinch's Pap is a convincingly nightmarish extrapolation of Twain's. He's the mad, lost and dangerous center of a world we'd hate to live in-or do we still live there?-and crave to revisit as soon as we close the book.

-newsweek

I haven't been swallowed whole by a work of fiction in some time. Jon Clinch's first novel has done it: sucked me under like I was a rag doll thrown into the wake of a Mississippi steamboat...Jon Clinch has turned in a nearly perfect first book, a creative response that matches The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in intensity and tenacious soul-searching about racism. I wish I could write well enough to construct a dramatic, subtle and mysterious story out of careful, plodding and unromantic prose, but for now I'm just happy to have an alchemist like Jon Clinch do it for me.

-BOOKSLUT

Finn strikes its most original chords in its bold imagining of possibilities left unexplored by Huckleberry Finn.

-austin american-statesman

An inspired riff on one of literature's all-time great villains...This tale of fathers and sons, slavery and freedom, better angels at war with dark demons, is filled with passages of brilliant description, violence that is close-up and terrifying...Everything in this novel could have happened, and we believe it... so the great river of stories is too, twisting and turning, inspiring such surprising and inspired riffs and tributes as Finn.

-new orleans times-picayune

A triumph of succesful plotting, convincing characterization and lyrical prose.

-ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS

Shocking and charming. Clinch creates a folk-art masterpiece that will delight, beguile and entertain as it does justice to its predecessor...In Finn, Clinch expands the bloodlines and scope of the original story and casts new light on the troubled legacy of our country's infamous past.

-new york post

In Clinch's retelling, Pap Finn comes vibrantly to life as a complex, mysterious, strangely likable figure...Clinch includes many sharply realized, sometimes harrowing, even gruesome scenes...Finn should appeal not only to scholars of 19th century literature but to anyone who cares to sample a forceful debut novel inspired by a now-mythic American story.

-atlanta journal-consitution

What makes bearable this river voyage that never ventures far beyond the banks is the compelling narrative Clinch has created. He writes exceedingly well, not with the immediacy Twain imbued to Huck's voice, but with an impersonal narrator's voice that almost perversely refuses to take sides. And the plot is masterful.

-fredericksburg freelance-star

Disturbing and darkly compelling...Clinch displays impressive imagination and descriptiveness...anyone who encounters Finn will long be hautned by this dark and bloody tale.

-hartford courant

Jon Clinch pulls off the near impossible in his new novel, Finn, which brings Huck's dad to life in all his terrible humanness...Clinch vividly paints the origins of the amazing Huck...powerfully told.

-winston-salem journal

Gripping...he inventively remaps known literary territory...the descriptive riffs are lucent.

-chicago tribune

The best debut so far of 2007.

-men's journal

Inventing Huckleberry Finn's father using only the thin scraps of information that Mark Twain provided is a pretty admirable feat, and reading Jon Clinch's first novel provides an almost tactile pleasure...Clinch clearly respects Twain, but he doesn't feel especially cowed by his inspiration, and some of his inventions qualify as genuine improvements on the original text.

-washington city paper

In this darkly luminous debut...Clinch lyrically renders the Mississippi River's ceaseless flow, while revealing Finn's brutal contradictions, his violence, arrogance and self-reproach.

-Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

Bold and deeply disturbing. . . A few incidents duplicate those in Twain,

but the novels could not be more different; instead of Huck's unlettered child's voice,

we have an omniscient narrative, grave, erudite and rich in the secretions of adult knowledge;

terse dialogue acts as an effective counterpoint. All along, Clinch's intent

is to probe the nature of evil . . . a memorable debut, likely to make waves.

-KIRKUS REVIEWS, STARRED review

Every fan of Twain's masterpiece will want to read this inspired spin-off, which could become an unofficial companion volume.

-LIBRARY JOURNAL, STARRED review

This is a bold debut that takes a few tentative steps in tandem with the familiar Twain,

but then veers off dexterously down a much more insidious, harrowing path.

-BOOKLIST

Jon Clinch's first novel Finn...succeeds wonderfully because its gritty lyricism is at once authentic and original...reminiscent at times of Cormac McCarthy...the eloquence of the telling will never make the courageous reader wish for a gentler touch. Like any appealing novel, Finn achieves the force of a dream with fascinating actions, indelible characters and spellbinding language. Its author is wily, astute and wise... Finn is a challenging and rewarding exploration of the suffering human heart. From the ominous shadow that was Pap Finn, Clinch has fashioned an unforgettable, twisted man and a marvelous novel.

-ROANOKE TIMES

Next month Clinch makes his publishing debut with Finn, taking up where Mark Twain left Mr. Finn 120 years ago: dead in a room surrounded by such mysterious oddities as a wooden leg, women's underclothing, and two black cloth masks. It's a great read.

-Knoxville News Sentinel

A native of upstate New York and a graduate of Syracuse University, Jon Clinch has taught American literature, has been creative director for a Philadelphia ad agency, and has run his own agency in the Philadelphia suburbs. His stories have appeared in John Gardner's MSS. magazine. He and his wife have one daughter.