So Brave, Young, and Handsome

Yesterday, the Arkansas State Library Book Club met during our lunch break to discuss So Brave, Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger.

Our book club formed last year to participate in If All Arkansas Read the Same Book, "10 Books in 10 Months," and we read the Sookie Stackhouse series with relish and enjoyed vivid and deep discussions about the series. When we finished the series, in December, we decided to continue the book club and embark upon a new adventure--reading a variety of works, based upon the individual interests of our book club members. We are in the fourth month of this new adventure, and while it has been bumpy, the adventure has also been rewarding. We are learning a lot about ourselves and each other as we delve into books that all of us would never read at one point or another.

This month's selection was Leif Enger's So Brave, Young, and Handsome--an early twentieth century western. Essentially, Enger's novel is about the "quest"--a Don Quixote or Ulysses sort of quest or journey (either will work), and the characters that Enger conjures for us are unforgettable. We discovered, yesterday, that all of us had decided that the character who was acting as narrator really did not understand his own story until the last chapter, and that he did not become his own man until he made a very fateful decision about three-quarters of the way through the book. The Don Quixote figure, Glendon--the central character--is the driving force behind the narration. He is the reason everything happens, and yet we are never quite sure why he is the reason. He just is . . . and for him, his reason for action is yet another character whom we do not meet until the last handful of chapters. The secondary characters are fascinating and fully fleshed-out; all of them have their own back stories and motives.

Enger's prose is inviting, and yet the story's meaning is elusive--a bit like the book's title and hardback cover's image. The chapter lengths are beautifully short and perfect for those quick snatches of time when all you want to do is read for a moment and be able to put the book away again without feeling remorse.

All of us but one found this book satisfying and ultimately enjoying to read. In fact, we want to read Enger's first novel, Peace Like a River, since we enjoyed his second forage into fiction so much.