This is an elegantly written novel about old age and death, looking back and hardly bearing to look forward. Dr. Ben Givens, a retired surgeon, learns he has terminal colon cancer and decides to take one last hunting trip with his two dogs and stage an elaborate accident for his suicide so as not to cause grief to his family. His wife died a year or so before and he sees only pain and suffering in the future as he declines. Things do not go according to plan, despite his careful preparations. The journey is back to where he was a child on a farm with orchards and cherries. Some of the novel is a typical road trip journey peppered with chance encounters with characters. Other chapters he looks back on his life in the Second World War and meeting his wife. His writing switches between the small stuff, what he ate, how things felt to the big landscape he is in. This isn't a landscape I know but David Guterson draws it well and beautifully. ( )

I loved this book. IT's really a story of searching and redemption. The author writes beautifully, and I loved the maps on the inside covers showing where the protagonist went. I loved the character development and the interaction among all the characters in the book. ( )

Elderly surgeon contemplates suicide because of a fatal cancer diagnosis but begins an adventurous journey full of memories and finds a different meaning in life.

[East of The Mountains] - David Guterson
5+★

It’s about a dying man’s final journey through a landscape that has always sustained him and provided him with hope and challenges. When he discovers that he has terminal cancer, retired heart surgeon Ben Givens refuses to simply sit back and wait. Instead he takes his two beloved dogs and goes on a last hunt, determined to end his life on his own terms. But as the people he meets and the memories over which he lingers remind him of the mystery of life’s endurance, his trek into the American West becomes much more than a final journey.

I first read this author’s [Snow Falling on Cedars] and really, really enjoyed it....so I looked forward to reading this one and I was in no way disappointed. He knows how to tell a story and make the reader feel the joy or the pain of his characters. As with all books there may be some sections that some readers will want to skim through I skipped through a lot of Ben’s service record in WWII…but it certainly took nothing away from the journey that Ben decided to make, and that is really what the story is about. Ben is almost dead when he and his dogs start the journey back to the east side of the mountains. He knows he’s more than likely not coming back… he expects to die…but he will do it on his own terms…just the way he has lived his life. Ben asks the question that the book poses throughout…”When all that has given joy and meaning to life has ebbed through death and change in our final years, what is the point of living?” It's thought provoking. Sometimes comforting and sometimes painful, but I don’t believe I have ever read a book that presents a more powerful challenge…daring the reader to put themselves for 279 pages in the shoes of Ben Givens and answer that question. ( )

With almost universally positive reviews, I was surprised how clunky East of the Mountains was. It feels written, as opposed to lived in; the characters feel constructed, the plot bolted together and the prose – which is one of the more commonly praised features – is over-detailed. Every minor thought and action is described, right down to a few lines going into the tying of shoelaces, proving a major drag on the pace of a plot that doesn't really have much substance to it anyway. The slew of place names in particular disrupt the flow, serving only to confuse rather than add texture.

Overall, the book is unconvincing in what it tries to do. Not only are the characters pulled off a shelf of the ready-made, but our protagonist, Ben, never convinces in the first place that he is going to suicide, and consequently his reappraisal and his pull back from the edge do not convince either. It all feels, as I said, bolted together, and you can feel the yaw as the plot points pivot and slump. It is very worthy, and maybe that's why it's not criticized very much, but I could not help but feel it was just sentimental Americana, capable only of inspiring a mild debate at some earnest Midwest book clubs. You just thirst for more texture, more appeal, as opposed to trivial details delivered by rote, and Ben's emotional journey remains unconvincing. ( )