Centuries Of June by Keith Donohue (43)

Keith Donohue has been praised for his vivid imagination and for evoking “the otherworldly with humor and the ordinary with wonder” (Audrey Niffenegger). His first novel, The Stolen Child, was a national bestseller, and his second novel, Angels of Destruction, was hailed as “a magical tale of love and redemption that is as wonderfully written as it is captivating” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). Centuries of June is a bold departure, a work of dazzling breadth and technical virtuosity.

Set in the bathroom of an old house just before dawn on a night in June, Centuries of June is a black comedy about a man who is attempting to tell the story of how he ended up on the floor with a hole in his head. But he keeps getting interrupted by a series of suspects—eight women lying in the bedroom just down the hall. Each woman tells a story drawn from five centuries of American myth and legend in a wild medley of styles and voices.

Centuries of June is a romp through history, a madcap murder mystery, an existential ghost story, and a stunning tour de force at once ingenious, sexy, inspiring, and ultimately deeply moving.

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Crown; First Edition edition (May 31, 2011)
• ISBN: 9780307450289

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Keith Donohue is the author of the novels THE BOY WHO DREW MONSTERS, CENTURIES OF JUNE, ANGELS OF DESTRUCTION, and THE STOLEN CHILD. He has worked in home construction, ran a cigar store, and the box office of a theater. For eight years, he wrote speeches for the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and now works at another federal agency in Washington, DC and lives nearby in Maryland.

REVIEW:

Weird.
And not the good weird that takes you places. No, the just plain weird that didn't work for me. I am finicky about ghost stories though.
Seriously, I kept reading on, all the while thinking it would go somewhere. It did't though.
I did love the idea behind the story. How it was trying to piece together, almost in a six-degrees-of-separation kind of way. It just fell flat. If it hadn't, it would have been epic.
Sorry, I just can't recommend something that was hard for me to push through reading. I wouldn't balk at anything else the author has written though. I did like where I thought it would go, so I'm hopeful something else by him works for me.


1/5

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