It's not you, it's me

When I spotted a David Guterson book that I hadn't read at a recent fundraising sale at The Oregonian, I quickly grabbed it and looked forward to catching up with what I'd missed. Judging from the superlatives on the front and back cover and in the pages preceding the opening chapter, I expected to be swept away by his 1999 novel, "East of the Mountains."

Like millions, I had read and thoroughly enjoyed his best-selling novel, "Snow Falling on Cedars." So I had high expectations for this one. 

Oh, it had its moments. But, oddly, when I finished the book I felt a mild disappointment. Reviewers across the country had praised it as "compassionate" and "masterful." "Profound and ambitious." "Compelling" and "graceful." "Strikingly joyful and a monumental achievement."

So, why did I have a dissimilar experience?

I'm not sure I have a good answer, other than I found the prose almost too writerly -- as if Guterson were trying to dazzle readers with the breadth of his vocabulary -- and maybe I'm too much of an urban creature to imagine his protagonist overcoming as much as he did in a two-day period in the rugged outdoors of Washington state.

The novel is built around 73-year-old Ben Givens, a retired heart surgeon and widower who's suffering from colon cancer and resolves to take his own life on a hunting trip with his two dogs. The novel goes back and forth between the present and the past, as we learn about his days growing up in Washington's apple growing country, his years spent as a reluctant soldier in World War II, and the courtship of his wife.

Without giving away the details, let's just say Givens has an accident on the day he goes out hunting and that triggers a series of events and encounters that cause him to reconsider his intentions and reflect on his life. Guterson describes the central Washington landscape in painstaking detail, intent on making it as integral to the novel as the doctor's internal dialogue and recollection of events that defined his life.

Sounds like a great yarn, right? For me, though, the novel dragged in spots because of what struck me as florid language and marginally believable actions on the part of Dr. Givens. Would a guy as old as him really have the stamina to pull off what he does under the circumstances in which he finds himself? OK, it's a novel, and I do understand that he's a fictional character. But still.

I'm probably in the minority in my assessment of this novel. If I were to meet Guterson, I think I'd have to tell him what Jerry Seinfeld so often said to the women he dated on his long-running show:  "It's not you, it's me."