The Sentimentalists

This debut novel, winner of Canada's 2010 Giller Prize, is the story of a father and daughter who attempt to overcome guilt and neglect in search of understanding and forgiveness. Celeste Ciulla's narration fails to aid in navigating a complex story that bounces from past to present among several characters. She doesn't breathe life into the settings or the characters: Napoleon, his unnamed daughter, and Henry, the longtime family friend who takes Napoleon in. Long, dense, often-awkward sentences and constant shifting from past to present and character to character challenge the listener to stay focused and engaged. The epilogue, in which Joey Collins and Greg Steinbruner read a trial transcript as young Napoleon and his inquisitor, leaves the listener with little insight into Napoleon's sad, tortured life. N.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

Starred review from March 7, 2011
Montreal poet Skibsrud's first novel, the dark horse winner of Canada's 2011 Giller Prize, is an intricate story about the crushing power of experience. As elderly, alcoholic Napoleon is being moved from his home in Fargo, N.D., to that of widowed family friend Henry Carey in Casablanca, Ontario, the unnamed narrator, one of Napoleon's two daughters, recalls time spent throughout her life in the Carey home and the strange story of her father, whose life fell apart after he returned from Vietnam. The story moves from the narrator's childhood; Napoleon's pivotal wartime service with Henry's son, Owen; and Napoleon's abandoning of his family, which crushed the narrator and her sister. Poetic ruminations are frequent but not oppressive, and provide uncommon perspectives on the characters: Napoleon's deathbed confessions "opened a seam through which the rest of the world now burst"; the narrator realizes, at her sick father's side, that her "own sadness seemed, at those times, to draw itself in—a complete and separate object—so that it seemed to have nothing to do with me anymore." Skibsrud's assured prose and graceful wordplay elevate this delicately structured story of redemption and forgiveness, and her storytelling is so refined and subtle that the punch at the end, while fully anticipated, still has a leveling power.