The Bright Forever - Page 2

The Bright Forever does not unfold like the traditional mystery novel; like other such stories (Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent comes to mind) the narrator conceals often as much as he reveals. Instead, the reader is presented with a lyrical portrait of pain. Not just the pain of Katie's death, but of the surrounding emotional turmoil as well: of the pain that leads Claire into her marriage to Raymond, largely to avoid the loneliness she sees etched in Henry Dees' often overlooked existence; Henry's own longing, perhaps best described as how he could ever explain his "love" for the Mackeys; and Raymond's own pain, trapped as he occasionally is in a distant dream world where he's not in control.

Martin eschews the notion that there is one guilty perpetrator and instead focuses upon the reality that those who live in the wake of a tragedy often obsess over what might have been, taking responsibility for the crime in a preventative way, worrying over what they might have done to prevent it from happening. At the same time, the novel is an exploration of life: of choices, of destiny, of how so often we end up the way we do, looking back at the scant years of our lives and wondering how on earth we got from point A to point B and whether anything could have derailed the Express to despair.

No, it isn't a pretty book, although it is beautiful in its way: painfully poetic, perhaps. Martin's prose is lilting and lyric, as if hard-wired to the psyches of the novel's troubled, tortured characters. The narrative slips back and forth in time and perspective, flitting from character to character and yet always rooted in the words of Henry, the social outcast whose silent eyes captured so much. The story's plot might be labeled simple in terms of the mystery, but what happened is far less important than why. It is the characters, trapped as they are in an inexorable march toward the tragic ending, and in the careful nuance of their development and their relationships, which provide The Bright Forever with its painful power.

Article Author: W.E. Wallo

W.E. Wallo is a book and movie junkie whose writings have appeared in a variety of print and online publications.

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