Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
Of course you don't always know where you are going – but for some reason all movements happen because they were meant to.There's a sense of inevitable tragedy at the heart of Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace and David Adams Richards is so masterful at introducing characters and then subverting the reader's assumptions about them that, while nothing is as it initially seems, the reader doesn't feel tricked – just satisfied when deeper truths are revealed.The book opens with a fight between 22-year-old Ivan Basterache and his wife of twenty months; the slow-witted, epileptic Cindi. Ivan looks like a monster (there was a shotgun involved that sent Cindi running into the night in just her underwear), but as the story develops, Ivan is revealed to be a noble and loyal soul. Others shun him as “puritanical” – no fun at all – but Ivan is the friend you want around to stare down your bullies, pay off your debts, solve your coyote problem (even if Ivan is sympathetic towards a coyote mama who is just trying to protect her kits). Ivan walked right up to him, with a boldness he always had, his eyes very bright and yet always a little detached from the moment; the eyes, in fact, of a person who has survived and lived by himself, without much help in early youth from anyone – neither mother nor father. As his separation from Cindi drags out, bored neighbours stir up trouble, taking Cindi's side against Ivan, until rumours become fact and even his own father wants to ingratiate himself with others in the community by bad-talking his own son. Antony's story was the same one at all times. It was just presented differently, with an indefinable self-deception and a lasting hope that the best points in it were true. And it had become clear now that his side lay with people who had made light of him, ridiculed his family, cheated him out of money, defamed his wife, bore false witness to his son, and held him in contempt.This is a relatively short book but its mood and characters are just so truthful – I know these people; I'm related to these people – and it was a delight to dip a toe in David Adams Richards' New Brunswick once again.
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