Scan barcode
A review by eadaoinlynch
Bright's Passage by Josh Ritter
4.0
The strengths of the prose are the occasional descriptions that capture moments perfectly. When you read this novel, take note of Ritter’s similes — I couldn’t find one that wasn’t ideal:
“Buried deep, her body had escaped the blaze, and now her skin and the ivory-white slip that she was dressed in dazzled out like a diamond from its soot-black facet of ground.”
“The peripheral branches of the big chestnut tree began to wither and brown, falling to the ground like burning feathers.”
Here, I think, Josh Ritter’s musical background shines through his prose in the most positive sense. These descriptions are just a few that I picked out at random and illustrate the power of storytelling that he has. (The Twitter for Bright’s Passage does this too!)
Apart from my own love for Josh Ritter, I have to admit that the chapters recounting Bright’s experience of the war are the most striking and well-written passages in the novel. There is one in particular that describes Bright and his friend Bert being separated from the line, when the church they were visiting is shelled by enemy fire. Their Sergeant is hit, and Bert, in his impatience and bravado, stands up to light a cigarette, and is then shot in the head. Bright is caught under Bert’s body and stays the night there until he can safely return to his line in the morning. However, during the night, Bright hears two men exit the nearby farmhouse. One gets curious when he sees bodies lying in the ditch and bends down to investigate. The description that follows had me squirming in my seat with its directness.
Stephen’s King’s review of the novel is on the NY Times website, wherein King preempts many of my own criticisms. Josh Ritter is already an established singer-songwriter (for whom I hold a dear place in my heart) but, as King outlines, “the ability to write narrative songs doesn’t always translate into the ability to write prose”. It’s usually minor mistakes — too many adverbs, occasionally weak syntax (sentences beginning with ‘He’ or ‘The’ repeatedly), and a tinge of the unbelievable that takes you out of the story. If I were lucky enough to be a trusted editor and this manuscript was dropped on my desk, I would do one thorough structural edit and after that it would be ready for proofreading, type-set and sign-off.
More than anything, the end is one of the strongest aspects of the book. At first, the storyline — a man called on by an angel (presumably, by extension, God) to raise the next King of Heaven — worried me that I was about to start a religion-heavy novel that would read and end like the Bible. Interestingly, the end of Bright’s Passage works against that idea, but still leaves room for a biblically inflected story that develops beyond the scope of the narrative. Ritter leaves it up to the reader to decide how the story really ends.
All in all, Bright’s Passage is an impressive first novel that, hopefully, heralds a long list of titles to come.
“Buried deep, her body had escaped the blaze, and now her skin and the ivory-white slip that she was dressed in dazzled out like a diamond from its soot-black facet of ground.”
“The peripheral branches of the big chestnut tree began to wither and brown, falling to the ground like burning feathers.”
Here, I think, Josh Ritter’s musical background shines through his prose in the most positive sense. These descriptions are just a few that I picked out at random and illustrate the power of storytelling that he has. (The Twitter for Bright’s Passage does this too!)
Apart from my own love for Josh Ritter, I have to admit that the chapters recounting Bright’s experience of the war are the most striking and well-written passages in the novel. There is one in particular that describes Bright and his friend Bert being separated from the line, when the church they were visiting is shelled by enemy fire. Their Sergeant is hit, and Bert, in his impatience and bravado, stands up to light a cigarette, and is then shot in the head. Bright is caught under Bert’s body and stays the night there until he can safely return to his line in the morning. However, during the night, Bright hears two men exit the nearby farmhouse. One gets curious when he sees bodies lying in the ditch and bends down to investigate. The description that follows had me squirming in my seat with its directness.
Stephen’s King’s review of the novel is on the NY Times website, wherein King preempts many of my own criticisms. Josh Ritter is already an established singer-songwriter (for whom I hold a dear place in my heart) but, as King outlines, “the ability to write narrative songs doesn’t always translate into the ability to write prose”. It’s usually minor mistakes — too many adverbs, occasionally weak syntax (sentences beginning with ‘He’ or ‘The’ repeatedly), and a tinge of the unbelievable that takes you out of the story. If I were lucky enough to be a trusted editor and this manuscript was dropped on my desk, I would do one thorough structural edit and after that it would be ready for proofreading, type-set and sign-off.
More than anything, the end is one of the strongest aspects of the book. At first, the storyline — a man called on by an angel (presumably, by extension, God) to raise the next King of Heaven — worried me that I was about to start a religion-heavy novel that would read and end like the Bible. Interestingly, the end of Bright’s Passage works against that idea, but still leaves room for a biblically inflected story that develops beyond the scope of the narrative. Ritter leaves it up to the reader to decide how the story really ends.
All in all, Bright’s Passage is an impressive first novel that, hopefully, heralds a long list of titles to come.