Undiscovered Country

March 10, 2008
With flashes of prose as crisp and haunting as the frozen Minnesota setting, Enger’s debut opens 10 years after Jesse Matson’s father’s alleged suicide, as 17-year-old Jesse sits down to write his own version of events. While hunting with his father in the woods surrounding their hometown of Battlepoint, Minn., the young Jesse hears a shot and finds his father dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. Adamant that his father could never take his own life, Jesse determines to uncover the truth. While his mother, Genevieve, retreats to her room and his younger brother, Magnus, looks to him for reassurance, Jesse becomes convinced that his uncle Clay actually killed his father. Despite a lack of evidence or support from law enforcement, Jesse hatches a plan to avenge his father’s death, bolstered by his deepening relationship with a girl who has plenty of problems of her own. Allusions to Hamlet
and Hemingway’s In Our Time
(Jesse reads both in school) do a little too much foreshadowing, but the landscape is beautifully rendered, and Jesse’s confusion is palpable.

April 15, 2008
In his debut novel, Enger, director of the MFA in creative writing program at Minnestoa State University, Moorhead, tells a modern-day "Hamlet" story set in rural northern Minnesota. Teenage Jesse's father, the mayor of Battlepoint, apparently committed suicide with his own hunting rifle. But Jesse suspects his Uncle Clay, who had more than one motive for murder. Is Jesse's suspicion simply his inability to accept his father's senseless act? Or is Clay really guiltyand how complicit is Jesse's mother? If Clay is guilty, what should he do about it? The obvious parallels with Shakespeare's play are even acknowledged by some of the characters, but Enger doesn't let this conceit overwhelm the story. He skillfully draws a portrait of small-town life and all its barely concealed secrets and effectively narrates Jesse's torment. One might wish for more ambiguity in the question of Clay's guilt, and the book's concluding chapters are a bit of a stretch, though thankfully they contain a little less bloodshed than the source material. Recommended for public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 3/15/08; Lin Enger is the brother of novelist Leif Enger.]Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2009
Adult/High School-In his most famous soliloquy, Hamlet speaks of that dread of something after death, "the undiscover'd country, from whose bourn no traveler returns," and this dread is realized beautifully in Enger's debut novel. While hunting deer in the northern Minnesota woods on a cold November afternoon, Harold Matson dies of a single grisly gunshot wound to the head. The local officials deem the death a suicide, but 17-year-old Jesse is convinced that his Uncle Clay is responsible for his father's death. The teen is visited by his father's ghost, has a girlfriend whose personal torment could give Ophelia a run for her money, and a bumbling/developmentally delayed relative (Clay's brother-in-law) who knows the truth about two murders for which Clay was responsible. But the elegantly written novel amounts to much more than just its allusions: Enger has taken a classic tale of betrayal, murder, justice, confusion, and forgiveness and created a story that will appeal to any teen who has experienced love and loss or grappled with dark family secrets. Readers might be left wondering what Hamlet would have been like had he survived. Less tragic perhaps, but he would have had an abundance of material for a career as a writer."Jennifer Waters, Red Deer Public Library, Alberta, Canada"

Copyright 2009 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2008
As in Jane Smileys King Learinspired A Thousand Acres (1991), Enger sets this retelling of Hamlet in a rural community whose very ordinariness underscores the universality ofShakespearesplot. Seventeen-year-old Jesse hears a shot during ahunting expedition, then discovers the devastated body of his dad, the towns mayor. Its officially a suicide, but Jesse suspects his fathers overshadowed younger brother and wonders if his mother might have been complicit.Though any Hamlet recap pretty much requires aghostly presence, Engertoo often falls back uponeerie visions and dreams as shorthand for psychological distress, andsome critical suspense is sacrificed byJesses first-person narration (he obviously survives to tell the tale, one of Engers major departures from her source). That said, Enger tightens the emotional screws in plenty of other ways, through stark, visceral descriptions of Jesses trauma (the fathers gunshot wound leaves a ragged lip of bone and flesh, surrounding a bowl that held a profane, incomprehensible matter), and throughtheicebound Minnesotabackdrop, an apt reflection of thecharacters frigid interactions and the novels pervasive sense of agonized suspension.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)