Summary
Ann Patchett: Trk
A prominent Boston couple, Bernadette and Bernard Doyle, always wanted to have a big and happy family. They had a son, Sullivan, and ten years later adopted two African-American boys, Teddy and Tip. But a black cloud hangs over the family when Bernadette dies when the adopted boys are only four years old.
The sons continue to be raised by the father, who is still capable of cultivating love within himself, but becomes possessive and ambitious to the limit. As a former mayor of Boston, full of faith in politics, which he feels is a natural human duty, Bernard strongly wants his sons to follow in his footsteps and achieve careers as politicians. However, his sons never shared that dream with him. One snowy night, after an argument with his father, Tip almost dies in an accident. His life will be saved by a passer-by, who will be seriously injured saving the young man.
The injured woman will end up in the hospital, and her daughter will be taken in by the Doyles until her mother recovers. By force of chance, two families will become one.
Ann Patchett, the author whom Zlatko Crnković already introduced us to by editing her successful book, Bel canto, crowned with prestigious literary awards, and in this novel with a mysteriously suggestive and ambiguous title, Trk, remains faithful to her recognizably elegant storytelling style. Readers will be presented with a complex of deeply human dilemmas and feelings, as well as an opportunity to contemplate everyday, yet rarely mentioned things such as genetics, privileges, opportunities, upbringing and parental love. The writer does not approach them lightly, but they still come to her with perfect ease: in Trek, she succeeds in creating a truly rich landscape of human possibilities, a palette of multi-layered, deeply developed characters, and a plot interwoven with the unsaid, the indicated, the suppressed. And that is precisely what Patchett will bring to the surface with a sure hand.
In the Croatian translation by Predrag Mavar and with the imaginative title illustration of Nenad Martić, the fifty-sixth title in Zlatko Crnković's library is another work whose quality is written in golden letters on the map of world literature.
Biblos Newsletter
New titles, special copies and quiet recommendations from the antiquarian bookshop.