Read from Tuesday, May 24th to Friday, May 27th.
The Unnamed, by Joshua Ferris. Found this book while browsing at a Barnes and Noble, and I was intrigued by the cover and the basic premise. A man can't stop walking. After a slow and rocky start, the novel really hit its stride (pun intended), and it became a deep, philosophical exploration of love, the relationship of mind and body, and the American desire and curse of constant movement.
Tim Farnsworth is a partner in a successful NYC law firm. He has a wife, Jane, and a daughter Becka, but also a terrible, unnamed disease that makes him walk. Literally, he can be doing anything and he will get a sudden impulse and not be able to stop walking for hours at a time. He can't control where he goes, and he only stops when he passes out into a deep sleep. When he wakes up, he calls Jane, and she dutifully drives out to pick him out. Tim had two previous periods of time when the disease had him in control, but both times it went into remission. Tim was able to go back to work each time, and regain some hope that it wouldn't happen again. Tim had been to every specialist under the sun, but none could agree on what was happening. Some said it was psychological, and others said it was a brain malfunction. Being unable to define the disease is the most frustrating thing to Tim, and he keeps it a secret from most of his friends and co-workers.
The third time the disease appears is the present story. Tim is working on a big murder defense case for the firm's most important client. Suddenly, he starts walking again, and each morning he is picked up again by Jane. It causes friction in the marriage, as Jane starts fantasizing about leaving Tim for a less stressful relationship, and Tim grows more depressed and contemplates suicide. Tim ends up being kicked off the case and loses his partner position in the firm. Finally Tim decides he cannot control it any longer and he lets his feet take him wherever they want. Tim doesn't call home after each walk, and he walks further and further away, all the way to the south, where Jane tracks him down in a diner that the deranged Tim pretends is his lawyer office, and the waitress his secretary. Jane tries to get him to come home with her, but Tim makes one of the hardest decisions of his life and stays on his journey. He does it out of love, and the desire to protect Jane and let her move on and not worry about him.
Tim takes psychotic medication, and that helps with his psychosis, because for awhile he was having conversations between his mind and body. Yet he continues to wander, and he gets good at it, traveling with a tent and supplies and steering clear of the authorities. Finally, he hears from his daughter Becka that Jane is sick with cancer, so he makes up his mind to walk back to New York. Even though his feet take him in any direction while he is possessed, when Tim regains control he walks East. It takes a long time, but he makes it to the hospital, and Jane magically recovers. But still Tim cannot stay. He resumes his walking, and months later he finds out that Jane died. Tim eventually succumbs to the elements and passes away, finally able to rest.
One thing about this novel I particularly enjoyed was the bizarre background scenery. It is set in a world with extreme weather, which I took as a parallel to the craziness of Tim and the modern world. Everyone is going berserk. There are constant forest fires, days upon days of snow, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes. But Tim walks through it all. A criticism of the novel is that it is too disjointed. There is a murder case, but Tim never finds the mysterious man he met on a bridge that showed him the murder weapon. That whole plot-line is dropped completely. The medical mystery is also unclear, even though it is Tim's obsession. Finally, the first part of the story is a traditional plot line, but then it is just inter-spliced episodes that go back and forth in time. Overall, I enjoyed the novel, even though it ended bleakly without much hope. Three and a half out of five stars.
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