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Buy The Story of Forgetting: A Novel by Stefan Merrill Block available and for sale on Brightsurf
| View Larger Image | The Story of Forgetting: A Novel
by Stefan Merrill Block
| | List Price: | $25.00 | | Price: | $16.50 | | You Save: | $8.50 (34%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 17741 | | Studio: | Random House | | | Binding: | Hardcover | | Number Of Pages: | 320 | | Publication Date: | April 01, 2008 | | Publisher: | Random House |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
In Stefan Merrill Block’s extraordinary debut, three narratives intertwine to create a story that is by turns funny, smart, introspective, and revelatory.
Abel Haggard is an elderly hunchback who haunts the remnants of his family’s farm in the encroaching shadow of the Dallas suburbs, adrift in recollections of those he loved and lost long ago. As a young man, he believed himself to be “the one person too many”; now he is all that remains. Hundreds of miles to the south, in Austin, Seth Waller is a teenage “Master of Nothingness”–a prime specimen of that gangly, pimple-rashed, too-smart breed of adolescent that vanishes in a puff of sarcasm at the slightest threat of human contact. When his mother is diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s, Seth sets out on a quest to find her lost relatives and to conduct an “empirical investigation” that will uncover the truth of her genetic history. Though neither knows of the other’s existence, Abel and Seth are linked by a dual legacy: the disease that destroys the memories of those they love, and the story of Isidora–an edenic fantasy world free from the sorrows of remembrance, a land without memory where nothing is ever possessed, so nothing can be lost.
Through the fusion of myth, science, and storytelling, this novel offers a dazzling illumination of the hard-learned truth that only through the loss of what we consider precious can we understand the value of what remains. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 11 reviews)
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A marvelous and compelling read, filled with tragedy, humor and hope 
Author Stefan Merrill Block's first novel is a tour de force of interconnecting lives, complete with the history of a family curse, fables about a land of no remembrance and scientific studies on Alzheimer's disease. Abel Haggard is an elderly hermit who lives in what was once his family's Texas farmhouse but is now a shack surrounded by McMansions, filled with owners who want to get rid of him. He survives by reliving his memories, beginning with his childhood as one of a set of twins, identical to his brother Paul except for Abel's hump.
Abel and Paul's mother told her young sons tales about the land of Isidora, a golden kingdom whose inhabitants were content because they remembered nothing. The Isidora fables had been passed down through their family --- a family in which so many relatives throughout the generations suffered the loss of their memories.
When Abel and Paul grow up, Paul marries Mae. Abel yearns for Mae; he is fascinated by everything about her, including her strange toes and the manner in which she eats beans. He is so enraptured by his sister-in-law, and rendered so hopeless by his impossible love, that he contemplates suicide. Instead, he does the unthinkable: he climbs into a tree outside the bedroom shared by Mae and Paul. There, in the dark, he watches them sleep, fantasizing about Mae and pondering Paul's oddly disinterested behavior toward her.
While Abel remembers his long-ago love for Mae, and the sequence of events unleashed by his passion, a shy and awkward 15-year-old boy named Seth Waller worries about his mother. Her behavior has become increasingly erratic --- she doesn't eat, never changes out of her nightgown, acts as if she has never before seen her own house, and shuffles along like a very old woman. One morning she asks Seth how long she has known him, saying, "I feel like I've known you my whole life."
Seth can't help being sarcastic with his mother at times, as a kind of defense mechanism. But it shrivels his soul to see the way his father treats her, labeling her forgetfulness as a case of deliberate selfishness. Seth's father works long hours. When he's home, he slumps in a recliner in front of the History Channel, swilling gin. After Seth's mother leaves the house in the middle of the night, Seth searches frantically until he finally finds her under a street lamp, carrying a suitcase and saying she's going home. Not long afterward, she is admitted into a nursing home and diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
Seth has always wanted to be a scientist. Now he is determined to find something, anything, that will help his mother. While he is reading everything he can find on Alzheimer's, he is also remembering the stories his mother often told him when he was a child. She told of a place beside our world, a real land called Isidora. People could cross over to Isidora, where much was the same as in this world...except everyone there felt happy because they couldn't remember anything. Seth also realizes how little he knows about his mother's background.
The lives of Abel and Seth intertwine in a surprising yet inevitable manner. The mosaic joins together, tile by tile, with interspersed pieces of family history, scientific studies of Alzheimer's and the Isidora lore. Abel and Seth are such fully-realized characters and their stories are so realistic that at times the reader can't help wondering how fictional they truly are. THE STORY OF FORGETTING is a marvelous and compelling read, filled with tragedy but also humor and hope --- and readers are sure to ponder the story long after they've finished it.
--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon
June 30, 2008 | |
The Story of Forgetting
THe most simbiotic reading with the family that faces the Alzheimer disease. Compelling, facts, and highly instructive.
June 05, 2008 | |
"Could there be anything more sad and more lonely than remembering what terrible things the future will bring?"
In his ambitious debut novel Stefan Merrill Block shows off the wide range of his talent. "The Story of Forgetting" combines elements of science, history, and fable into four storylines that weave together to tell a single story. And it works, for the most part. I can see how some may have been turned off by the quirky nature of Block's storytelling or grown bored with the genetic history storyline, but I have a feeling that the majority of literary fiction fans will enjoy Block's novel just as much as I did.
The first storyline concerns Abel, an elderly hunchback living in isolation and haunted by the ghosts of his brother and sister-in-law and the daughter that ran away from home never to be seen again. He bustles around his dilapidated house in his failing body, desperately filling the void around him and trying to avoid stillness that might lead to reflection on how he got to this lonely point and whether or not it is deserved. The modern world is creeping up on all sides of his property, showing Abel just how little use the world can make of an outdated person like him, and his neighbors are trying to force him out so they can raise their property values. But Abel is holding onto the hope that someday his daughter might come looking for him, and he wants to be waiting when she does.
Second is the story of Seth, your typical gawky, angular teen and a stereotypical nerd and social outcast. His mother has recently been placed in a home after a nasty fall and a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's disease - an extremely rare genetic disorder that Seth, who may someday be a victim of the same disease, becomes obsessed with researching. In truth, his research is equal measures avoidance and an attempt to get closer to his family. All his life, Seth's mother was careful not to reveal anything about where she came from or even why she felt the need to be so secretive, and his research allows Seth a unique opportunity to finally find out just who his mother is. At the same time, it allows him to escape the nightmare of his social life, visits to the home where his mother is by far the youngest resident, the paralyzing fear that he too may suffer her fate, and lonely nights where his father drinks too much and watches the History Channel, unable to bear the burden of disappointment and sorrow.
The third storyline introduces us to the mythical world of Isidora, a "land without memory, where everything one needed was at arm's length, where there was never reason to be afraid, where nothing was ever possessed and so nothing could ever be lost." Isidora provides a curious link between the stories of Seth and Abel, because both of them were raised on fairy tales of the fabled city. While one may question whether or not Isidora is actually as utopian as the author would like you to believe, the charming element of fable that it brings to the novel and the creativity and passion of its creation will win you over in the end.
And finally is a storyline concerning the genetic history of Seth's family and how the genetic variant that created the early-onset Alzheimer's disease got started and spread, tracing the lineage all the way to Texas, where Seth and his family reside. If it occasionally feels superfluous and not that consequential to the plot, Block imbues it with the same charming element of fable that makes you forgive the excess in the end.
The main attractions here are Abel and Seth, and they make "The Story of Forgetting" well worth your while. And if the link between their two storylines is painfully obvious about sixty pages in, it is still a heartfelt journey seeing how their lives converge in the end. As for Block, he proves to be a remarkably thorough and creative writer, as well as a literary talent to watch in the coming years.
Particularly recommended to fans of Jonathan Safran Foer's sterling Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel and Nicole Krauss' The History of Love: A Novel.
Grade: A-
May 16, 2008 | |
Beautiful, lyrical, uplifting
This book won me over from the very start. Stefan Merrill Block creates a realistic and achingly beautiful picture of an old man, Abel, full of grief and regret, but ultimately full of love. A very different young boy, Seth, has his own grief, over his mother's early-onset Alzheimer's, and his own deep love for his mother. This sets Seth off on a quest to discover both more about his mother's disease and her history. The only real clue he has to both of these are the beautifully told Stories of Isidora--stories Abel also knows, even though the two have no knowledge of one another. The ways that Block brings these two characters together, and the discoveries made along the way, are told in a unique, almost lyrical style.
One of my favorite books!
May 13, 2008 | |
Beautiful, moving novel 
Stefan Merril Block's debut novel beautifully interlaces science and emotion to depict a disease that is old in its effects but only recently becoming understood. He approached the story through parallel story lines interweaving a leitmotif of loss and identity, and although it is not iconoclastic, it is nonetheless effective and engrossing. I recommend it and look forward to enjoying future works of this young author.
May 11, 2008 | |
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