Staff Pick
I have read a lot of baseball writing, and I have never seen the game more beautifully portrayed than in The Brothers K. But this epic novel is about far more than just baseball. David James Duncan weaves a beautiful family saga surrounded by the '60s, religion, coming-of-age drama, and, of course, baseball. The Brothers K is a must-read alongside Sometimes a Great Notion for readers in the Pacific Northwest. Recommended By Jeffrey J., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
Once in a great while a writer comes along who can truly capture the drama and passion of the life of a family. David James Duncan, author of the novel The River Why and the collection River Teeth, is just such a writer. And in The Brothers K he tells a story both striking and in its originality and poignant in its universality.
This touching, uplifting novel spans decades of loyalty, anger, regret, and love in the lives of the Chance family. A father whose dreams of glory on a baseball field are shattered by a mill accident. A mother who clings obsessively to religion as a ward against the darkest hour of her past. Four brothers who come of age during the seismic upheavals of the sixties and who each choose their own way to deal with what the world has become. By turns uproariously funny and deeply moving, and beautifully written throughout, The Brothers K is one of the finest chronicles of our lives in many years.
Praise for The Brothers K
“The pages of The Brothers K sparkle.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Duncan is a wonderfully engaging writer.”—Los Angeles Times
“This ambitious book succeeds on almost every level and every page.”—USA Today
“Duncan’s prose is a blend of lyrical rhapsody, sassy hyperbole and all-American vernacular.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“The Brothers K affords the . . . deep pleasures of novels that exhaustively create, and alter, complex worlds. . . . One always senses an enthusiastic and abundantly talented and versatile writer at work.”—The Washington Post Book World
“Duncan . . . tells the larger story of an entire popular culture struggling to redefine itself—something he does with the comic excitement and depth of feeling one expects from Tom Robbins.”—Chicago Tribune
Review
"[Duncan's] massive second effort is well worth the wait. It is a stunning work: a complex tapestry of family tensions, baseball, politics and religion, by turns hilariously funny and agonizingly sad....The book ends with a quiet grace note a reprise of its first images to satisfyingly close the narrative circle." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"Another quintessentially American saga from Oregon writer Duncan....Unfortunately losing focus as it tracks family members around the world...this epic story is still marvelously detailed and poignant, and a garden of delights for baseball lovers." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"The pages of The Brothers K sparkle!" The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Among its many merits, it reflects far better than most fiction the wide variety of Sixties experiences....Baseball provides the central metaphor for this huge hypnotic novel, but although in that sport a 'K' indicates a strikeout, here it scores a home run." Library Journal
Review
"Duncan is a wonderfully engaging writer." Los Angeles Times
Review
"This ambitious book succeeds on almost every level and every page." USA Today
Synopsis
While their father mourns the destruction of his nascent baseball career and their mother clings obsessively to her faith, the four Chance brothers choose their own ways to deal with what the world has to offer them.
Synopsis
Finally in trade paperback, complementing Bantam's new release of River Teeth and our consistently bestselling edition of The River Why, here is The Brothers K, a lyrical and lovely novel of family.
Synopsis
David James Duncan's first novel,
The River Why, met with such enthusiastic praise for its journey of self-discovery that it became a contemporary classic, with readers comparing Duncan to J. D. Salinger, Ken Kesey, and John Irving. Yet, as one reviewer noted, "His [style] is not merely a patchwork quilt....His is a genuinely new, genuinely original voice in American fiction, a voice which is not quite like any you've read before." (
San Jose Mercury News)
In The Brothers K, Duncan amplifies the considerable accomplishment of his first book as he centers this tender and powerful story around a Pacific Northwest family in the early '60s. The Chance family is wild about baseball and cantankerous about religion. Papa is a gifted but luckless minor-league pitcher whose big-league hopes are fading. Mama is a devout Seventh Day Adventist, constantly in motion to save her wayward sons. When a mill accident crushes Papa's thumb, and Mama's inexplicable fanaticism threatens to shred what little the family has in common, parents and children find themselves embattled over the ideals represented by baseball and religion. It is young Kincaid, the easygoing middle child, who chronicles the humor and spiritual beliefs that alternately sustain and confound this family in a small Washington mill town. And it is in his maturing voice, as his brothers leave town to enter one of the country's most bewildering decades, that we hear the inescapable tensions wrought from one American generation testing another's vulnerabilities. Through the Chances, David James Duncan asks sublime questions about life, self-sacrifice, and enduring love in an ever changing world.
Synopsis
Finally in trade paperback, complementing Bantam's new release of River Teeth and our consistently bestselling edition of The River Why, here is The Brothers K, a lyrical and lovely novel of family.
About the Author
David James Duncan is also the author of
The River Why;
River Teeth, a joint memoir and collection of stories; and
My Story as Told by Water, an essay collection.
The River Why ranks thirty-fifth on the
San Francisco Chronicle list of The 20th Century's 100 Best Books of the American West.
The Brothers K is an American Library Association Best Books Award-winner and a
New York Times Notable Book. Both novels won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award.
Duncan has read and lectured all over the United States on wilderness, the writing life, the nonmonastic contemplative life, the fly fishing life, and nonreligious literature of faith. His work has appeared in Harper's, Outside, Orion, The Sun, Sierra, Big Sky Journal, Northern Lights, Gray's Sporting Journal, and many other publications. He lives with his family on a Montana trout stream.