The Inhabited World

by David Long and David Long

Book Overview

The eighth book from an award-winning and acclaimed author, The Inhabited World is Long's most gripping and profound work. Evan Molloy -- a son, husband, and stepfather -- fatally shot himself but... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618872361
• ISBN13: 9780618872367
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 277 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.6" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Dark, haunted, human...

Evan commits suicide and returns 10 years after his death to his Seattle area home where he tries to understand "why" he did it - he reflects on his life and his quest for strength to escape his battle with depression and failed relationships. The book is dark and often foggy and rainy like its setting in winter in the Pacific Northwest. However, it is beautifully written and places the reader in the shoes of one where if your DNA was off-kilter just a tad - you can imagine that it could happen to you...

Haunting

I have not, in the past, felt compelled to write reviews on the internet, but this book is so haunting, smart, poetic, and strange, I can't help myself from asserting to potential readers: read it. This is an author who has such a sense of the nature of human beings, their motivations, the depths of the psyche--it changed the way I'll ever again see some of the people in my life. While I was reading it, I found myself talking to its characters, recalling its details, singings its praises to strangers. It entered my dreams! I'm not doing it just, but will say, you won't find another novel like this, and you won't forget it.

A Ghost Story for Adults?

The Inhabited World is what Evan Malloy left behind by dying. It is world he can see and hear -- but never rejoin -- after his death. In this novel, David Long turns around Descartes' dictum, "Cogito, ergo sum", and re-structures the world from the viewpoint of one who no longer lives, but still thinks, and does so with more understanding than when he was alive. This is not your typical ghost story, although Long makes it clear from the outset that his narrator and principal character, like Dicken's Marley, is indisputibly deceased. 10 years after his death, Evan Malloy thinks, feels, sees, and hears everything that goes on in what had once been his Seattle house. Long's crisp prose describes the characters populating the story, both the quick and the dead, with startling immediacy. They talk as real people do, not always making sense or even saying what they really mean. We are allowed to hear the internal dialog as well as what is actually spoken. I enjoyed seeing the present and past, and gradually fitting the pieces together, to see what drove Evan to despair and then to suicide. To call this a ghost story is somewhat misleading, as it does not fit the mold of fantasy or "sci-fi." Its fictional characters are delineated, and their conversations crafted, in a reportorial style. If there were a genre for this book, it might be "imaginative memoir", for Evan's story is told in flashbacks, even as the action of new characters unfolds. A vivid and compelling read, and, despite its gritty, reality-based subject matter, a book that left me feeling good about life in the inhabited world.