David Guterson’s ‘The Other’

  “The Other,” by “Snow Falling on Cedars” author David Guterson, centers around two friends.
  Neil Countryman is a schoolteacher and family man. His childhood friend, John William Barry, is a paranoid hermit who lives in the woods.
  I love paranoid hermits who live in the woods! (OK, not the Unabomber, but all the other ones.)
  The hermit is about the only thing I loved about this book.
  Neil and John William met in 1972 when they were teens. Neil tells their story in laborious flashbacks with very little dialogue.
  John William becomes increasingly unstable and Neil moves more into the mainstream as they grow up. John William drops out of college. Neil graduates. John William hates the world. Neil, not so much.
  “One thing has led to the next in my life, but like lines of a poem. I suppose I’ve thrown in my lot with love, and don’t know any other way to go on breathing. I embrace this world — the world my friend hated — and suffer it consciously for its compensations, and fully expect to awake one day to the consequences of this bargain I’ve struck, since life, eventually, closes in.”
  John William rejects society and decides to live in a cave in the wilderness. Neil helps him but worries about his friend’s future.
  “I said, ‘So what happens when the cans are gone?’
  ‘I’ll have more room.’
  ‘You’ll walk out of here.’
  ‘No, I won’t.’
  ‘You’ll go up to Forks for bacon and eggs.’
  ‘No.’
  ‘You’ll start thinking about hamburgers and have to come out.’
  ‘That’s you,’ said John William. ‘You’re thinking of yourself. You’re a loyal citizen of hamburger world.’ ”
  The book does have some eloquent passages, but for the most part it is overwritten, slow and boring. The few bits of dialogue aren’t enough to keep the story moving along, and the long-winded narration is just too much.
  Fans of Guterson might like the book for the few diamond phrases buried very deep in this text, but for me, I wanted a little bit more of the hermit and a little less of Guterson’s droning.