Emperor of the Air is one of the best short stories I've read. I've read it over and over, and years ago I looked everywhere to find the new Ethan Canin story. But by the time I got to Blue River, I started to feel like Canin was interested more in the form of storytelling than in the story...it was a good book, but definitely not the rich novel I was waiting for. After reading Carry Me, I'm feeling like I've been watching a writer who's publishing his writing exercises more than one who is obsessed with writing a great novel.

The main character of this story, August Kleinman, is very complex, with a past that includes horror, joy, wealth, and sorrow. What we witness in the book are mostly memories: of WWII, his childhood in NYC, his adulthood in Pittsburgh, and his retirement to Boston. Generally, this past is far more interesting than the present tense of the story until the end, when he travels to Japan to confront his wartime self and the family of the man he killed in battle (well, kind of a battle). I don't think the drama of this moment pops, however, because the cold detachment of the story keeps the character and the reader at a distance, and because the choices the author makes about who Kleinman meets in Japan just seems all wrong.

I think, in many ways, this book relies on good short story moments--the old rich man bagging groceries in order to stay useful, the old man mistaking his grandson for his son, the old man facing his past in Japan--rather than novel-length drama. In the end, I felt that sense of "Wow" that I feel after a good short story but not that deep satisfaction I feel after a novel, that feeling that I've made new friends and really know more about a place, a time, and a world than I did before.

I loved this book. It's a riveting story of an old man's struggle to come to terms with a lifetime of decisions and their consequences. As Kleinman mounts a series of small, surprising initiatives to fight the boredom and loneliness of retirement and widowhood and to build a relationship with a grown son who distrusts and misunderstands him, he reflects with conflicting emotion on the experiences that have shaped his life. Canin covers an astonishing range of material here -- recognizing fear on his infant son's face in rough play, feeling peace as he and his mother fled Germany for America without his father-- these are moments so disparate in substance and scale and chronology that in most writers' hands the full story would take 600 pages to tell. Not in Canin's. He moves through them so seamlessly that despite my plans to get a good night's sleep I stayed up to finish the book in one sitting. And the compassion and emotional insight for which the author has earned a much-deserved reputation graces every scene. The CPR class Kleinman takes with his wife is alone worth the price of the book. This scene is less than a page (less than a page!), and reading it brought two friends who had not yet even read the rest of the book to tears.

For those of you who haven't read Canin's other work, I envy you. Read "The Palace Thief" after this one. I challenge you not to read it more than once.

I bought "Carry Me Across The Water" the day it came out. I was blown away by Canin's book "For Kings & Planets" and had been eagerly awaiting his next one. I wasn't let down.
In comparison with Canin's other works, "Carry Me" is short and almost poetic. This sparse novel only runs 206 pages in length, but the story is infinitely bigger. August Kleinman, the main character, is a man driven to complete a task his life has been leading him toward...as a young soldier in the Pacific during World War II, he killed a Japanese soldier. 50 years later, he brings the soldier's family "souveniers" that he collected when he killed the soldier.
This book is a lot more than that, though. It is about love, and accepting the passage of time. It is about overcoming fear (particularly during the well-written World War II sequences.) It is also about moving on with your life.
I loved every page of this novel. In terms of emotional impact, I would say it is like "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee...it is a short, amazingly suspenseful work that you will think about and remember for a long time afterward.

This book contains 4 short stories that are good, but not terribly memorable (even though the back cover calls them "unforgetable"). I read this book only a couple of weeks ago and can only remember one of the stories very well: The Palace Thief.

The Palace Thief has nothing to do with a palace or a conventional thief. It was also used as the basis of the movie, The Emperor's Club. The story has the same feel as Dead Poet's Society with a professor that gets his students to dress in togas as they study Greek history and literature. The story is good but, in my opinion, the only true gem in the palace of this book.

Ethan Canin likes to infuse his stories with baseball and other diversions enjoyed by men. I suppose these are the types of things he himself enjoys when he's not writing books or working as a doctor.

To be honest with you - the reason I picked up the book was because I knew "The Emperors Club" with Kevin Kline was based upon The Palace Thief. I decided I would read the story before going to see the movie. But I got sucked into the first story "Accountant", and I was hooked. The stories are insightful and give a short gimpse into a life during a critical time, or during a life changing event which challenges the way the character thinks and reacts. I highly recommend "The Palace Thief" to anyone! P.S. The movie was as excellent as the story in the book.

The best of these stories were such a relief to me, after reading literary story after literary story in the "New Yorker" and elsewere that had that bland, icestuous, politically correct MFA writer program graduate stamp to it. An essay in the "L.A. Times" referred to such writers as "Stepford Writers." And to read stories like "The Accountant" where the stories actually have some LIFE and PERSONALITY and ORIGINALITY was wonderful. I was prepared to be an eternal Ethan Canin fan. But then I read some subsequent stories of his, and he succumbed to the bland MFA type story!! He became a Stepford Writer. How horrible!! Well, at least I have these stories to read again. I just don't have any FUTURE Canin stories to look forward to (Oh, please surprise me Ethan!)

Ethan Canin wrote these when absurdly young, in his early to mid- 20s, I think. In spite of his youth, this extraordinary collection of short stories is indispensable for those interested in short fiction. It includes "We are Nighttime Travelers," which I've probably read ten times and still marvel at the grace and nuance

Though Ethan Canin was only in his late 20s when he wrote this book of short stories, it is the work of a great thinker and an unusual writer. It has become one of my favorite books and I'm not ashamed of saying it ranges along with Steinbeck, Auster and Kundera's as one of this century's great works.

...because now I'll never see it again. Stated simply, this is a work of art. The stories are inspired, and the characters are handled with such compassion and subtle understanding that it is difficult to believe that this is Canin's first published work. I agree with the critics that it is also his best. Having read _Of Kings and Planets_ recently, I feel that his artistic integrity may be suffering the pressure of compromise coming from his book deal, but it may also be that his subject matter is exhausted. I thought that _Blue River_ was all right, though it was certainly outshined by this gem. I agree with the other reviewers that "We are Nighttime Travellers" and "Star Food" are the kind of stories that stop time dead in its tracks. If he never writes a good book again, Canin should still be regarded as an exceptional success.

I enjoyed most of the short stories in this book, particularly Melanie Rae Thon's and Jill McCorkle's. It's a diverse collection, and it's hard to like all the stories and their styles, but I found most of them enjoyable and well-written. And it led me to read other books published by the authors I liked. If you're a fan of short stories, this is a good book to read.

Ethan Canin's previous two books were works of genius. I especially enjoyed Emperor of the Air, each story is simple but poignant, almost Carver-esque. Which makes For Kings and Planets so much more of a let down. Instead of the unobstrusive prose, Canin chose to write in flowery prose, something he is simply not good at doing. Writing a novel instead of vignettes is also not Canin's forte, as the plot goes everywhere and the third person is unconvincing. The book is also too preachy, especially about the meaninglessness of education in favor of precocity. I highly recommend Canin's short stories, they will change you. But don't pick this book as your first, because you'll never want to read this guy again. If you like to read about Ivy League schools and precocity, check out Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise and Salinger's Franny and Zooey, respectively. About boyhood relationships that turn sour, read Chabon's the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

This was my first experience with Ethan Canin. A gifted storyteller, he takes readers through years in the lives of college friends Orno Tarcher and Marshall Emerson. Canin is not subtle in his writing, but he still allows his audience to form conclusions on occasion with little help.

I found it easy to relate to Orno's naive existence and to feel irritated by Marshall's sometimes clear indifference towards Orno and life in general. Some of Marshall's qualities, in fact, may remind readers of JD Salinger's Holden Caulfield (although Marshall is not nearly as vivid or complex). Canin is, on the other hand, guilty of providing too much detail at times and straying from the central theme or idea of the story. But this is a minor flaw that is far outweighed by his lucid descriptions of the characters. Some of these do indeed surface at odd times for inexplicable reasons. However, the ease of Canin's storytelling combines with descriptive language and an interesting plot to make this definitely a recommended read.

Because we know and use fiction craft, authors can often see behind the curtain of another author's book. That's why I loved the fine thread of suspense by which Ethan Canin kept me reading to find out what would happen to his enigmatic characters who behaved as if they weren't sure who they were, and therefore the reader isn't sure. Canin kept them on the elusive edge of excess and poetry and irrationality. I couldn't stop reading until I knew if they'd fall off. For me it's rare to find a novel I can't put down -- perhaps because I've been reading them since I was six. It's rare to find descriptions that linger after the book is read. This was my first Canin. Next time I want to be engrossed, I'll pick up another of his books.

J. R. Lankford
Author, The Crowning Circle

I picked up "Blue River" after breezing through two delightful reads, "Emperor of the Air" and "The Palace Thief" both by Canin. I recommend reading every one of the short stories in each of these two volumes.

"Tedious." This word kept popping into my head while I labored into "Blue River." I thought it was me. Surely this story would improve and flower into a marvelous and richly colorful Ethan Canin story. 75 pages, 100 pages, 150 pages. Would this ever develop into something readable? Should I give up?

I didn't. And I had to laugh at all the other reviews here on Amazon.com "Tedious" "The shortest book I never finished." Naturally. They are all correct. Believe the negative reviews.

"Blue River" is a hugely disappointing, cliche-filled, seemingly unedited, overly stylistic diatribe that is boring. Not very far along in the book, the protagonist yuppie eye surgeon is "chasing his demons" and daring to drive through Pacific Coast Highway switchback turns with his eyes shut late at night. Uh-huh. Most assuredly, you too will root for a good car crash. No such luck, however, and the reader is taken back through an awful Cain and Abel coming-of-age saga set in Blue River, Wisconsin high above the banks of the Mississippi. The worst part is that it is written in this horrific style of a letter from the younger, angst-laden yuppie brother to the older miscreant brother. "Lawrence, you didn't know I knew that you knew" sort of technique. Ugggh. Spare us.

It's a shame this book turned out so badly because Ethan Canin is a very talented writer. I have confidence this was an early set back in a very promising career, and I look forward to finding the next Canin novel in my public library.

This is the shortest book I failed to finish. I'm sorry, but for a short novel, it was just got too wordy and touchy-feely for me. I loved Emperor of the Air, a collection of short stories in which feelings and places were described succintly. And the events happened at a quicker pace. But in Blue River, Canin stretches out all his descriptions of places, of main character's resentments, disappointments, fears, and memories. It really feels tedious to read and halfway through it, I just had to give up.

I thought this was a very well-written and interesting description of the relationship between two brothers. I agree that pages 75-125 were slow but the rest of the book is by no means dull. Canin gradually reveals what caused the estrangement of the two brothers and his description of life in the small Wisconsin town where he grew up is often vivid with truly three-dimensional characters. I don't know whether anyone will believe me after reading the prior reviews but I highly recommend this novel.