The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint
January 11th, 2003by Brady Udall
ISBN: 0375719180
I loved this book.
As one might guess from the title, Edgar Mint’s story is an unlikely one, but it is one that sucked me in, one that I totally believed in. The novel starts with the story of the event from which all others in some way trace their way back toward: the day when he was seven years old when the mailman ran over his head and everybody thought he was dead.
The novel is written in an in an odd, split-first person point of view (sometimes I, sometimes Edgar) that is compelling. After the accident, not-dead Edgar spends a long time in St. Divine’s hospital, where he started collecting weird things like a urinal puck to protect him from ghosts, and develops and unlikely bond with his devasted roomie, Art. Art gives him the Hermes Jubilee typewriter that will in some way make everything that follows bearable:
What a luxury it was to be able to spend three or four hours a day pounding on my Hermes Jubilee, getting it all down. I typed because it felt good, because I had nothing else to do, because I thought by getting it on paper, by turning the nameless into words, I might understand things a little better. (p.139)
To list the things that happen to or around Edgar might make you think this is an unbearably depressing book, but it isn’t. (I’m also not going to list them, because I think you should go read it, right now, and I don’t want to ruin it for you.) What keeps Miracle Life from being that kind of depressing book is the combination of the dark humor in the writing, Edgar’s naivete, and the strange is-it-faith-or-is-it-fatalism that pervades the story.
There are some great questions getting asked in this book: What is the limit of what people can bear, and what happens when they are pushed beyond those limits? What is the difference between belief in God and faith in God? What does it mean to be chosen, to be set apart? What is it about the strength of the bonds we choose to create with others? Can what is wrecked be made whole?
So go get this book at start reading it. Reading Edgar’s story is the kind of thing where you don’t want to be doing much of anything besides reading more of it once you start. At a hefty 400+ pages it will take awhile, and best of all, it will stay with you once you put it down.
January 14th, 2003 at 7:26 am
I heartily agree: I read Edgar Mint last year, and I’ve found myself thinking of the story again and again after closing the covers. I’m excited to get Udall’s story collection and read that eventually.
Another book I read at the same time (and so permanantly linked to Edgar Mint was Leif Enger’s Peace Like A River. That one’s definitely worth a read, too.