Brailling For Wile
by James Zerndt
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Pub Date Aug 14 2015 | Archive Date Mar 02 2016
Description
Brailling was something twelve-year-old Mattias Long learned to master during the games of Scrabble he used to play with his mother while they waited for his father, Wile, to close up the family restaurant. But now, one year after his father's suicide, it's Mattias who feels cheated. He hates his father. He hates him for leaving Mattias and his sister, Georgie, alone. He hates him for turning his mother into a young widow who hasn't left the house in months. And he hates his father for leaving behind his stupid tree. Four of them are planted outside the restaurant, one for each family member, his father's now casting the biggest shadow. Both literally and figuratively. That is until Mattias's mother, no longer able to stand the sight of the tree, hires a local landscaper to remove it in the middle of the night. This seemingly unremarkable act soon sets in motion of series of events in the small Colorado ski town that leaves more than just young Mattias groping in the dark for answers.
Brailling For Wile is a unique novel told from multiple points of view about loss and the lengths some will go to heal the human heart. Ultimately, it is a story about lives being uprooted and what it takes to go on living even when everything in the world might be telling us it isn't possible to.
*Warning: This is NOT a book about Scrabble. One of the major themes of the book is suicide. Suitable for adults and mature teens. Contains some profanity, violence, and sex.*
A Note From the Publisher
"Kent Haruf with a dash of the Coen Brothers."
Advance Praise
Zerndt (The Korean Word for Butterfly, 2013, etc.) explores themes of love and grief in this chronicle of a family tragedy in a small town.
It’s been almost a year since Mattias Long found his father Wile’s body hanging
from a noose in his home office, but his family is still far from recovered.
Mattias’ sister, Georgie, prefers a sleeping bag under her father’s desk to her
own bed; his mother, Judith, is shattered by her recent discovery that her
husband was having an affair. Mattias, meanwhile, exists in endless confusion
that he can’t bring himself to voice. Unable to grieve together, the Long
family scatters outward, seeking catharsis in different pockets of their
community. Their ordeal forms the core of the novel and serves to illuminate
the connections between a number of disparate characters, including Easy, a ski
resort worker whom Georgie befriends; Helyana, Mattias’ religious best pal; and
Sally White, the woman with whom Wile was having an affair. Every character has
his or her own particular preoccupations and Zerndt handles them with aplomb,
using his large cast to shine varied lights on the themes of family, grieving,
and hope after loss. Indeed, the author’s skill with so many interwoven
characters makes the few missteps stand out; Easy’s immediate infatuation with
Georgie seems groundless, especially given their age difference, and although
Helyana’s religious fervor makes sense, given her background, the frightening
extent of her zealotry is out of place in the larger narrative. Still, the
novel’s merits outweigh its flaws. Zerndt’s language is evocative: Mattias’
mother’s sour breath, for example, “makes him feel like he’s just stuck his
tongue to an old 9-volt.” At another point, Georgie describes the ceiling as “a
sky made of wood. A sky made of beautiful nothing.” Such moments exemplify what
makes this novel successful, as the characters’ journeys, no matter how small,
come together to form a treatise on the interconnectedness and everyday beauty
of humanity.
A measured but ultimately uplifting meditation on family and hope in dark
times.
-Kirkus Reviews
Available Editions
| EDITION | Ebook |
| ISBN | 9781511527279 |
| PRICE | $4.99 (USD) |
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Average rating from 20 members
Featured Reviews
Carol S, Librarian
INteretsing and well written book. Some of the writing was just beautiful! Loved it
Larry H, Reviewer
Scrabble fans, the word "brailling" means feeling the surface of a tile while your hand is in the bag in order to draw a blank or other specific letter. This practice is strictly against the rules. (Don't worry, this isn't a book about Scrabble.)
At times while reading James Zerndt's moving but slightly scattered Brailling for Wile, I felt as if I could benefit from brailling to help me find my way to the beautiful heart of this book. At its core, this is a book about love, loss, redemption, and recovery, and it touches you and makes you think. It's just at times it loses its way a little bit.
Thirteen-year-old Mattias Long and his older sister Georgie have been left reeling since the suicide of their father Wile (so called because "his crazy plans to build his family a better life...ended up with an anvil falling on him," like Wile E. Coyote) one year ago. Mattias has been responsible for watching over their mother, who is so consumed with grief that she hasn't been able to reopen the family's Colorado restaurant, The Sad Cafe. And then their mother makes a discovery that changes all of them, sending them reeling and pondering their next steps.
Mattias and his family aren't the only ones struck by life and loss. Brailling for Wile follows a number of other people in the small ski town where they live, and many are trying to overcome their own dilemmas and figure out their own lives. And then a seemingly simple request from Mattias' mother sets a course of events in motion that affects an ever-widening circle of people and forces them to confront their own issues.
As you might imagine from a book about loss, there is a lot of emotion conveyed in this story, and it's very engaging. There are a lot of different threads of the plot to keep straight, although they eventually intersect, and while most of them work, one subplot involving Mattias' friend Helyana and her ultra-religious grandfather seemed utterly unnecessary and unrealistic, and I found it tremendously distracting. I don't think the book needed to artificial chaos that those characters brought about—it was almost as if Zerndt didn't trust the power of his story without that, and it was moving more than fine on its own.
But despite the one discordant thread of the story, this is still a moving, well-written book that I felt in my heart and my head. It definitely makes you think how you'd handle the situations the characters find themselves in, and I was left thinking about these characters even after I finished the book. I'm glad I read this one.
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