Ambiguities of Family, Religion, and War

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	• The Brothers K David James Duncan Dial Press Trade Paperback, 1996 - 656 pages average customer review:based on 117 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Strike Out Looking and Smiling

Putting down a good book and thinking is common. When I finished, The Brothers K just left me smiling (I felt rather like Irwin Chance). Through the weaving narratives of a family of eight (and their love interests, distant relations, and pets), David James Duncan tells a story of people, of place (mostly Eastern Washington), of an era (the '60s), and of ideas (Eastern philosophy and Christianity, baseball and fishing).

The Chance family is dysfunctional in too many ways to count. The father seems to be an atheist. The mother is a devout adventist. The children are split along similar secular and sectarian lines. As baseball, the clergy, politics, and war threaten and succeed to drive them apart, love pulls the family back together. At points in this book, you will not be able to stop laughing. At others, you will be forced to stop reading in sadness. But in all of it, humanity shines through. Duncan's book is a pleasure to read.

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Ambiguities of Family, Religion, and War

The struggles the Chance brothers face and the life choices each makes mirror those of the nation's youth during the Vietnam era. Each of the brothers' choices in light of the Vietnam War; Everett to flee to Canada, Peter to seek student deferment, Irwin to claim conscientious objector status but serve his country when his status was denied, and Kincaid's medical deferment represent paths taken by young men at the time. The divergent paths of each brother divided the family, just as the choices of American youth divided the nation. In the reuniting and healing of the Chance family, Duncan implies that the nation can also mend the wounds caused by this turbulent era.
Irwin's remarkable triumph conveys Duncan's message of hope for apparently dismal futures. Duncan's The Brothers K rightfully received the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Award and the American Library Association Notable Book of the Year Award. These well-deserved awards honor Duncan's artfully delicate explanation of the ambiguities of family, religion, and war for timeless generations.

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An Epic Novel

The K in David James Duncan's The Brothers K is as much a nod to the scorer's notation in baseball for a strikeout as it is an homage to Dostoyeski's The Brothers Karamazov. The novel begins in 1956 in Camus, Washington, where Hugh Chance, a minor league baseball pitcher and family patriarch, loses his thumb and atheltic career in an accident working at the local paper mill. The story of the Chance family, Hugh and Laura Chance, their six children (four sons followed by twin daughters), is told by their youngest son Kincaid, with the help of letters, poems, and old school reports written by various family members.

The Brothers K is an original, sprawling, always charming marathon of a novel. Duncan's is a unique voice, stretching out in only his second novel -- a great effort, bursting with warmth and talent.

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Great start but meanders and cliches

This book has a wonderful beginning and truly invites you into the Chance house. But the vibrant and unique characters lose their individuality as Duncan seems to lose his way with the story, instead choosing to rely on sentimentality.

Duncan's foray into the Vietnam War almost takes an John Irving/Owen Meany like turn - out of place and tarnishing.

The River Why deserved 5 stars. The Brothers K is a great read the first 200-300 pages. Afterwards, just put it down.

My favorite book

The Brothers K is a masterpiece to say the least, for a single man to put into words the insights of another mans life would be miraculous undertaking in itself. In this case the author David James Duncan not only undertakes such a task, He goes well beyond. His Epic journey weaves us through the dynamic progression of an entire family. Involuntarily immersing you on a level so personal you can't help but align your self to the novels humanity. This book is a chronicle of not only the progression of its characters souls on their path through life as it is a glimpse into a time still to close commentary. The way in witch this book is written is unlike any I have ever read but it does not strike you as radical in any way, Until you have read and can fully begin to comprehend and understand its power. It is almost as if one man some how channeled the energy of an age that could not express its self in history books. There is not much that can be said to really pitch this book except maybe that if you lived in the time of Beethoven you probably would not have heard of him or his music but if you were ignorant to such and integral part of a culture as Beethoven now it would be at the least a personal loss, I'm not trying to say Duncan is a genius. But as a writer he is a master and this is his masterpiece his 9th symphony.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

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