The Hired Man
Ratings2
Average rating4.8
15
Ratings2
Average rating4.8
Gost is surrounded by mountains and fields of wild flowers. The summer sun burns. The winter brings freezing winds. Beyond the boundaries of the town an old house which has lain empty for years is showing signs of life. One of the windows, glass darkened with dirt, today stands open, and the lively chatter of English voices carries across the fallow fields. Laura and her teenage children have arrived. A short distance away lies the hut of Duro Kolak who lives alone with his two hunting dogs. As he helps Laura with repairs to the old house, they uncover a mosaic beneath the ruined plaster and, in the rising heat of summer, painstakingly restore it. But Gost is not all it seems; conflicts long past still suppurate beneath the scars.
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Astonishing, powerful, gripping, and increasingly more so on all counts as the book went on. The pacing, for one, is phenomenal: started off intriguing, then kept developing, gradually, mercilessly. I felt more absorbed with each chapter. It's not so much the what—we know there’s going to be bad shit, or, more precisely, we know there was a lot of bad shit and some of it is going to get shown to us—no, it's the how: how do good people live with those memories? How do they live, day after day, with monsters?
The first-person narrator is a gem. Honorable, hardworking, capable, and deeply moral. I kept thinking of him as an embodiment of Stoic ideals, wondering if Forna has read Epictetus and Seneca. (Did I say "him"? Yes: Forna writes a completely believable male protagonist, with access to his rawest feelings and motivations. How can she do that?) (Okay, maybe a touch more sensitive than most males, but not impossibly so.) The rest of the characters are... well, they’re props. Lovable or despicable despite their lack of depth; this isn’t their story.
TW for cruelty, violence, heartbreak and suffering galore. Highly, highly recommended regardless.
