The Father's Tale part one

I decided to begin again and tackle a 1072 page novel that I have wanted to read for a long time.  After starting it in 2020 and subsequently, having to lay it aside after making it almost 400 pages into the story, (crisis after crisis tsunamied our year that year), I picked it back up this week and decided it was time.

The Father's Tale is a novel by Michael O'Brien.  Mr. O'Brien is a phenomenal author.  I tackled another one of his books years ago, Island of the World.  His writing is beautiful and he has the unique ability to make you forget where you are - draw you deep into the world he is writing about - and do it all so seamlessly.  One minute I am walking up and down my own hall, trying to hold onto this heavy tome, read, and walk all at the same time, the next I am wondering the hallways of his home and bookstore, The Kingfisher.  Snatching at memories as they wash over Alex, wondering where the youngest son is, wondering why no one else seems to ever sense that impending doom that 'no, everything is not as it should be' that parents have?

Although, I knew this was the week to pick this up and begin again at page one, I also knew I would have to spread the book over two weeks because we are in the midst of so many other things...Advent, a Christmas read-aloud, math and science lessons...

So for the first five hundred and seventy-two pages, (or the first twenty-three chapters) I have been awash in Alexander Graham's world, knee deep in the love of a father for his son, and realizing that truly to love someone - there is nothing you would not do to rescue them.  You would lay down your very life to get them back.  Also this:  there is probably not a more helpless feeling in the entire world than to know someone you love so deeply is lost and you are searching and scrambling to find them...but to seemingly no avail.

I will leave you with the opening lines of the novel:

"On the first Sunday of Advent in the previous year, a man named Alexander Graham said a prayer that was to have unforeseen consequences.

He lived on Oak Avenue in Halcyon, a town of twelve hundred souls situated in the forest hill country north of Lake Ontario.  Because his home was only a few blocks from his parish church, he went out that evening in a snowstorm and trudged up the street with the intention of making a brief visit to the Blessed Sacrament.  Although he was not an exceptionally pious person, he had of late been haunted by a sense that his life was over, or soon would be, and he wished to speak to God about it." Chapter One, Part One (there is a prologue before this)