Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Undiscovered Country by Lin Enger - Wait list

Undiscovered Country

by Lin Enger
Kirby Heyborne
Audiobook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 4 weeks
Place a hold Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 4 weeks
Unaware that his life is about to change in ways he can't imagine, seventeen-year-old Jesse Matson ventures into the northern Minnesota woods with his father on a cold November afternoon. Perched on individual hunting stands a quarter-mile apart, they wait with their rifles for white-tailed deer. When the muffled crack of a gunshot rings out, Jesse unaccountably knows something is wrong-and he races through the trees to find his dad dead of a rifle wound, apparently self-inflicted.
But would easygoing Harold Matson really kill himself? If so, why?
Haunted by the ghost of his father, Jesse delves into family secrets, wrestles with questions of justice and retribution, and confronts the nature of his own responsibility. And just when he's decided that he alone must shoulder his family's burden, the beautiful and troubled Christine Montez enters his life, forcing him to reconsider his plans.
In spare, elegant prose, Lin Enger tells the story of a young man trying to hold his family together in a world tipped suddenly upside down. Set among pristine lakes and beneath towering pines, Undiscovered Country is at once a bold reinvention of Shakespeare's Hamlet and a hair-bristling story of betrayal, revenge, and the possibilities of forgiveness.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    July 8, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781415956243
      • File size: 275971 KB
      • Duration: 09:34:56

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Kirby Heyborne expertly renders the isolation of a teenager who is falling apart in the midst of an icy winter landscape. In this reworking of HAMLET, Jesse Matson's father dies on a deer hunting trip in the snowy woods of Minnesota, and the death is ruled a suicide. After a ghostly visit, Jesse believes his Uncle Clay murdered his father and is in love with his mother. He vows retribution. Avoiding fake Minnesotan accents (thankfully), Heyborne creates authentic characters. Jesse is not particularly likable, but his anger and pain are palpable. Girlfriend Christine Montez, daughter of an immigrant baseball player with handy fists, is empathetic and honest. Jesse's dead father has a voice that is hollowed-out and haggard. A.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 10, 2008
      With flashes of prose as crisp and haunting as the frozen Minnesota setting, Enger’s debut opens 10 years after Jesse Matson’s father’s alleged suicide, as 17-year-old Jesse sits down to write his own version of events. While hunting with his father in the woods surrounding their hometown of Battlepoint, Minn., the young Jesse hears a shot and finds his father dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. Adamant that his father could never take his own life, Jesse determines to uncover the truth. While his mother, Genevieve, retreats to her room and his younger brother, Magnus, looks to him for reassurance, Jesse becomes convinced that his uncle Clay actually killed his father. Despite a lack of evidence or support from law enforcement, Jesse hatches a plan to avenge his father’s death, bolstered by his deepening relationship with a girl who has plenty of problems of her own. Allusions to Hamlet
      and Hemingway’s In Our Time
      (Jesse reads both in school) do a little too much foreshadowing, but the landscape is beautifully rendered, and Jesse’s confusion is palpable.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading