Following along in my previously posted observation that the year's top-grossing movies are all about having fun at the theatre, while the critically acclaimed movies are undoubtedly more of a bummer, Ironweed fits right into that formula. The best-selling book of the year was an adaptation of the top-grossing movie of the year (Return of the Jedi), yet Ironweed is a rough book in which death follows the main character Francis along every step of his life.
The thing is, of course, that it's such a good read. It comes off as poetry rather than prose much of the time, and once I'd given up any pretense of expecting (or even wanting) a quick turnaround to a happy ending, I was content to follow Francis to as close a state of peace as he was going to get.
I hate giving spoilers in any context, so suffice it to say that the deaths that haunt Francis are both from his own hands and seemingly just by association with him, and early on the book introduces a motif that has him communing with the dead as casually as he does with the living, and it's written by Kennedy casually, too, so as to not bring about questions of supernatural activity - this is just something that Francis does. It allows for him to bare his soul to the reader and not the characters around him, almost like it was a stage play where he turns to the audience and delivers an aside to let us know what's really happening. It all makes for a unique read.
Not that the world needs my voice to recommend a book like this - here it is anyway.
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