Long for This World

by Michael Byers

Book Overview

A wise and richly symphonic first novel, Long for This World is a thoroughly contemporary family drama that hinges on a riveting medical dilemma. Dr. Henry Moss is a dedicated geneticist who stumbles upon a possible cure for a disease that causes rapid aging and early death in children. Although his discovery may hold the key to eternal youth, exploiting it is an ethical minefield. Henry must make a painful choice: he can save the life of a critically...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618446486
• ISBN13: 9780618446483
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.6" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

A wonderful piece of work - don't miss this one!

Astounding! This book absolutely blew me away, and is probably one of the best books of the year so far. Byers has a gorgeously simplistic, elegant and, at the same time economical writing style that just sweeps you along. Not only does he manage to recreate such vivid realistic characters, but also develop a story that just commands your attention. What a talent Michael Byers is with an epic, intellectual and beautiful style that is very reminiscent of Michael Cunningham and Julia Glass. So convincing is Byers portrayal of suburban, American middle-class life that you could be mistaken for thinking that Henry, Isla, and their two children, Sandra and Darren are real people. I must confess that although I new what Hickman's disease was, I knew very little about it, so this book was a real education for me. And Byers doesn't swamp us with unnecessary scientific jargon on genetics - he gives us just enough information so that we get the drift of what is going on. The story is just a heartbreaking in its account of what people like William and his family go through in trying to cope with this illness. Much of the novel takes place in 1999 in Seattle during the dot.com boom, and one gets a real sense of the money that people were making during this time. The story also gives us a sense that this excess can't continue forever, and that the bubble must eventually burst. I think this novel works on many, many levels, provoking serious thought about modern American life - its excesses, and America's obsession with money and materialism. The novel also provides a stunning portrayal of the Seattle, which at the time faced an uncertain future with lots of civic change taking place. Through Henry, Byers effectively juxtaposes materialistic obsessions with the amazing abilities that humans can have for love, compassion and self-sacrifice and the lengths that people will go to show this. Byers places us in Henry's position and asks us the central question of what lengths would we go to save a life -a life that is probably doomed anyway. The novel also gives us an interesting insight into the legalities of gene research, and much of the story is devoted to the somewhat cold-hearted buying and selling of genetic stock.Of all the characters though, it is Isle who is perhaps the most interesting. As a new immigrant from Austria, she comes to America with a fresh eye and some interesting and funny views on the country. All the characters, both major and minor, have something to offer this story and the reader. But it is Isle's path towards self-discovery that resonates long after you have finished the book. Long for This World is a remarkable piece of work!Michael

Beautiful, funny, moving

You might not want to read this astounding book in public. It is so funny that you'll burst out laughing, and so sad you'll weep. But mostly, it is a beautiful book, the story of ordinary, good-hearted people trying to do right in a confusing world. Its plot concerns life and death medical matters, but one of its themes is the Secret Life. Each character follows a potent, secret passion that remains hidden from but influences his or her family and public life. But these are not melodramatic secrets: they're the secrets most of us keep, and far from destroying the family that's at the center of this book, these secrets infuse it with new life and vitality. This is a book about mystery, but not just medical mystery: it delves into the mystery of what it means to be alive and how to make sense of the world. Long for this World fills the reader with a sense of hope and transcendence that lingers long after the book's been finished.

Do not miss this novel.

What a wonderful surprise this book is! Michael Byers shows that he can bring his gift for short-story writing to a novel, and the characters explode deep and fully-developed from the first line and grow from there. The result is a very fine and moving read. Henry Moss is a research doctor working on Hickman, a condition that causes children to age rapidly and die prematurely. As he tests the DNA of a new patient's family, he discovers that the boy's 17-year-old brother has a blood mutation that might permit him to stop the syndrome's deadly progress. He is faced with the most human of dilemmas when he must decide whether to try the new enzyme on a dying child before testing is even begun. A very kind and decent man, Henry is wracked by the possibilities he faces: he may lose his license, he may save a life, or he may become incredibly rich-a possibility he sees all around him in mid-90's Seattle where the book is set.Everyone in "Long for this World" is a marvelous creation. Henry's Austrian wife, Ilse, has a story of her own and a martinet mom who has moved to a nearby condo. His daughter is a gifted athlete, and his son a sweet, goofy 14-year-old. You become engrossed in the lives of his favorite Hickman patient and his family, and in the family of the strange atypical-positive teenager who is the catalyst for so much hope."Long for this World" will entrance everyone who picks it up because of its humanity, humor, and warmth. This is exemplary fiction not to be missed.

some kind of wonderful

I read this book in four days--100 pages a day--while I was working a really dull temp job, and so when I think of this novel, when I recommend it to friends, when I read aloud to them from it (as I already have), it'll be partly because I'm grateful to Michael Byers for infusing those four days of time-crawling numbness with the kind of giddy joy that comes with reading a really good book. Suddenly life wasn't so grim. There were possibilites. Byers' book of stories was terrific, so I'm not surprised his first novel is so full-bodied and alive. (He reminds me of early Updike; bursting at the seams with love for the tactile world and its inhabitants.) Some folks were just born to write. But now of course, comes that terrible dilemma: What to read after a really wonderful book? What could possibly match its pleasures? You're all luckier than me---you still have this novel before you. Waiting. So go. Enjoy.

A Beautiful Follow-Up

It looks like I'm the first person to review this novel, so let me start by saying that I don't know Michael Byers or his publishers, and I have no vested interest in the success of his book. You can trust me, then, when I tell you how much I enjoyed it. I admired Byers's first book, The Coast of Good Intentions, tremendously---perhaps the richest, most tender and humane story collection of the past five years---and I have been wondering for some time when we would see something new from him. Now I see why it's taken so long. Long for This World is a big, delicately rendered book with a deep and expansive sense of its characters and the world they inhabit. It has all the strengths of his story collection. The prose is easy and precise, polished in a way that never calls too much attention to itself, and the people he creates never seem less than authentic. A few of his characters are science fiction readers, and while there are none of the conventional trappings of science fiction in this book, occasionally a mood of fantasy creeps in at the very edges, as though the world is threatening to burst open and become something no one ever could have expected. Michael Byers isn't the sort of writer who can do everything (the momentum of his stories can be very slow, and I'll confess that there are times when my interest in Long for This World seemed to lag behind his own), but what he does do, he does very, very well. That is, he lends careful, sympathetic consideration to the minds of his characters and to every detail and color of what passes through them. His books seem to be written according to the same philosophy that's expressed by one of his characters toward the end of the novel---"not that it was bad luck to waste things, but that anything that existed was too precious to waste." The best thing about Long for This World is that it makes you experience that preciousness for yourself.