Jim Stegner saw red. Rage overflowed and murder became the focus of his narrowing field of vision. The question is can he move on from his past or is he destined to repeat it?
The Painter
Written by Peter Heller
Read by Mark Deakins
Knopf / Random House Audio
May 2014
Stegner, after attempting to kill a man in a bar, does his time, moves away to take up the solitary life of a wilderness painter. Leaving the past firmly in the past he focuses only on the here and now. Until he comes across a man beating a horse. His vision goes red. Again. Now he has to deal with the consequences as the authorities and a vengeful family member close in.
The Dog Stars was perhaps my favorite book of 2013. Beautiful, sorrowful, and written with prose to match. The Painter’s prose delights and once again the reader becomes lost in Heller’s storytelling mastery. The problem is that it seems like Heller gets lost as well.
While the story is compelling throughout, and there are times of intensity that supersedes the ability most authors, and the way that Heller uses art to tell the story is fantastic, the ending is unsatisfying. How things wrap or not just doesn’t live up to the meandering, long build up. Still enjoyable I was disappointed ultimately in the book. I recommend The Dog Stars as highly as I can. But I think it would be fair to pass on this one and wait for his next book.
A note about the audio book: Mark Deakins does a masterful job of moving just slow enough through the prose to being the story to life but fast enough to convey the urgency that takes over at times. He also read The Dog Stars and was great on that as well. The listener can easily move between characters without losing the flow. In my opinion one of the best readers available.
