Finn

You might call FINN a prequel to Twain's classic. In an entertaining and beautifully crafted novel, Clinch imagines what might have happened to Huck's amoral and violent father before and after Huck escapes his clutches. Told in the present tense, it's a treasure trove of opportunity for the right reader, and Ed Sala is that. His speech seems that of a middle-aged mid-nineteenth-century American. He modulates his voice for Huck (was he mulatto?); for Finn's black mistress, Mary; for Finn's self-righteous and bigoted father, who is a judge; and for Finn's drinking buddies. Best of all, Sala reads at a pace that lets listeners appreciate the fine descriptions of the Mississippi setting. In an informative author interview, Clinch says he was working toward something that could be read aloud. He succeeded. J.B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

Starred review from December 18, 2006
In this darkly luminous debut, Finn, the namesake of the title, is not Twain's illustrious Huck, but Huck's father, "Pap." As the novel opens, an African-American woman's bloated corpse floats downriver from Lasseter, Ill., toward the slave territory of St. Petersburg, Mo. In the Lasseter woods, Finn—a dangerous, bigoted drunk—tells his blind bootlegger friend, Bliss, that he's finally "quit" his on-again, off-again African-American companion Mary, the mother of Finn's second son (also, confusingly, named Huck). Chronically short on money, Finn is shunned by his father (Adams County Judge James Manchester Finn) and by his brother, Will. Finn does odd jobs, traps catfish and claims tutelary rights to Huckleberry's share of Injun Joe's gold. (In this last, he is thwarted by Widow Douglas and Judge Thatcher, high-handed and stifling as ever.) The opaque in medias res narrative then backs up to detail Finn and Mary's life together: his drinking, his stint in the penitentiary following an assault (sentenced by his own father), Mary's rising debts and Finn's attempts at restitution. As the nature of the woman's murder becomes clear, Clinch lyrically renders the Mississippi River's ceaseless flow, while revealing Finn's brutal contradictions, his violence, arrogance and self-reproach. If Clinch's debut falls short of Twain's achievement, it does further Twain's fiction.