Whereas the last book was something I read compulsively, but did not always ENJOY reading, The Death of a Beekeeper was completely the opposite. It seems surprising that this novel could be so entrancing, so personal, so involving, but something must have appealed to me because I did, after all, buy it. And this one definitely goes on the permanent shelf.
Beautiful, spare, utterly captivating. I absolutely loved reading this book and the only reason it took me two days was because I had to keep stopping to consider what I was reading, to let my mind wander through this new world that was being created by words, and occasionally to doze off into the world of dreams (decongestants). Gustafson’s prose and power of description are wonderful. The story is not really a story in the traditional sense, it purports to be the miscellaneous journals found in the house of a man who has died of cancer, the journals of a man dying of cancer. But the writing draws one in to this world and makes the reader feel the world, as if these could be his or her journals (if most of us could write this well) and we feel these thoughts, this world, and the slipping away of this world very deeply. Rather than reading a story about someone else in someplace else in order to escape one’s self for a bit, the reader becomes the narrator, at least in part, and this becomes as much the reader’s story and the reader’s loss as that of some imagined character. One reads and begins to feel the events and thoughts as if one was a part of them, as if one’s own memories are being created.
A tremendous accomplishment.