{"id":12862,"date":"2011-05-14T13:59:46","date_gmt":"2011-05-14T17:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookdragon.si.edu\/?p=12862"},"modified":"2014-05-17T16:15:40","modified_gmt":"2014-05-17T20:15:40","slug":"the-other-by-david-guterson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-other-by-david-guterson\/","title":{"rendered":"The Other by David Guterson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2011\/05\/Other.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-28189\" src=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2011\/05\/Other.jpg\" alt=\"Other\" width=\"314\" height=\"450\" \/><\/a>I could cry over <em>The Other<\/em>. And not tears of the &#8216;I&#8217;m so gratefully happy&#8217;-variety, alas; I&#8217;m talking truly disappointed waterworks.<\/p>\n<p>David Guterson writes quietly wrenching novels, including his bestselling\u00a0<em>Snow Falling on Cedars<\/em>, and later\u00a0<em>East of the Mountains<\/em>, which I actually found more effecting.\u00a0<em>The Other<\/em>, too, could be described as quietly wrenching &#8230; but it&#8217;s also tediously neverending. Sniffle sniffle.<\/p>\n<p>Neil Countryman and John William Barry meet in 1972 on the high school track when John William narrowly beats Neil in a half-mile race. Raised in two different worlds\u00a0\u2013 working class Countrymans, old-money established Barrys\u00a0\u2013 the two unlikely friends will wander in and out of each other&#8217;s rather disparate lives.<\/p>\n<p>More than three decades later, John William dies alone, having spent his final seven years living in a Washington wilderness cave, his solitude broken only by Neil&#8217;s provision-bearing visits.\u00a0On page 6 of the novel, Neil\u00a0\u2013 now a husband, father, English teacher, unpublished novelist \u2013\u00a0unexpectedly inherits John Williams&#8217; $440 million. He spends the next 250 page trying to figure out what happened and why, re-examining, re-envisioning his relationship with his enigmatic friend.<\/p>\n<p>Numerous plausible elements for a memorable story are definitely here &#8230; and perhaps therein lies the problem. So much seems promising \u2013 the traumatic long-term consequences of dysfunctional families, the hypocrisies of the overprivileged, the debilitating effects of easy money, the abandonment of so-called civilization for a purer life, etc. etc. \u2013\u00a0that the end result too soon devolves into\u00a0predictably flat,\u00a0clich\u00e9d repetition.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n<p><strong>Published<\/strong>: 2008<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I could cry over The Other. And not tears of the &#8216;I&#8217;m so gratefully happy&#8217;-variety, alas; I&#8217;m talking truly disappointed waterworks. David Guterson writes quietly wrenching novels, including his bestselling\u00a0Snow Falling on Cedars, and later\u00a0East of the Mountains, which I actually found more effecting.\u00a0The Other,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,81,6,60],"tags":[6608,2020,10,11,805,309,853,571],"class_list":["post-12862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-audio","category-fiction","category-nonethnic-specific","tag-bookdragon","tag-david-guterson","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-mark-bramhall","tag-nature","tag-other","tag-personal-transformation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.14 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Other by David Guterson - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-other-by-david-guterson\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Other by David Guterson - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I could cry over The Other. And not tears of the &#8216;I&#8217;m so gratefully happy&#8217;-variety, alas; I&#8217;m talking truly disappointed waterworks. David Guterson writes quietly wrenching novels, including his bestselling\u00a0Snow Falling on Cedars, and later\u00a0East of the Mountains, which I actually found more effecting.\u00a0The Other,...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-other-by-david-guterson\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-05-14T17:59:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-05-17T20:15:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2011\/05\/Other.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"314\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"450\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@SmithsonianAPA\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Other by David Guterson - BookDragon","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-other-by-david-guterson\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Other by David Guterson - BookDragon","og_description":"I could cry over The Other. And not tears of the &#8216;I&#8217;m so gratefully happy&#8217;-variety, alas; I&#8217;m talking truly disappointed waterworks. 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