First off; Welcome to the next stop on the To Nourish and Consume blog tour! There have been some great reviews and Q&A this week all about To Nourish and Consume so if you have not already checked out the other stops head on over to Ryan O’Reilly’s website and check out what others have to say about the book. And now on to today’s event, my review of the book….This review contains spoilers….
To Nourish and Consume delivers in many ways a classic plot that almost every reader can relate to; love triangle that forces the protagonist to acknowledge identity issues and of course coming home again only to find that it has remained unchanged. The story begins with a brief introduction to Brain Falk and his best friends and love interests Jackie and Dabney. Both men love Jackie but find that they are also intrigued with one another. Like all good love triangle stories though it must come to an end when eventually two members break off and leave the third devastated and forced to question his own views on love and relationships. That is exactly what happens when Jackie chooses, just after graduation, to marry Dabney simply because he is more financially endowed. Brain flees and finds that in the ten years that he is away from his home town he is unable to maintain intimate relationships. After ten years of trying to live and forget his love for both Jackie and Dabney, Brain Falk, our protagonist, takes us on a journey to discover himself, his true love and his connection to his home town.
What Brain discovers when he returns home is not only does it seem that time has remained still in his home town, but all his emotional angst so to remains. Now he is forced to decide if he truly loved Jackie or if what he felt for Dabney was in fact love. He also must open both his heart and mind to his new love interest Alissa and decide if he is ready to leave the past behind to fully engage himself in the relationship with Alissa.
This novel had many fantastic lines, ones that were both poetic and universal. The kind that can only be produced by an author who both understands his characters and whom has taken time to play with language and make it gently flow with the mood of the novel (see some of my favorites below in the Novel Moments section). I found myself underlining and tweeting these fantastic moments often. All that being said I cannot help but be somewhat disappointed that the story did not always live up to those poetic moments. This novel is all about looking back and picking apart personal history to heal and move on and yet Brain (and our narrator) only superficially share the past with the reader. I feel like the husband in Alan Robbe-Grillet’s Jealousy peering through the blinds at Brain, Jackie and Dabney seeing just glimpses of their interactions and having to make sense of those glimpses. “Outside” seems to be a theme of the book, Brain is outside of Jackie and Dabney and the world they belong to and because of the holes left by unfulfilled details of the past the reader too is always left just outside the story.
However, that is not to say the book is not worth reading. Although it is promoted as a novel for Generation Y it is more universal than the publisher and the author lead their readers to believe, simply because the overarching theme, love lost and found. Personally, I feel that if more time was spent building up the relationships of the characters the emotional impact of the return home would have been greater and the willing disconnection of Brain from Jackie in the end would have been more powerful. I recommend this book to those who enjoy love triangles or coming of age stories (while I would not really classify this book as a coming of age story it does contain some aspects of one that would intrigue those who enjoy typical coming of age stories).
Novel Moments:
“Fear can sometimes bond one heart to another as strongly as any other emotion, fear being one of the more natural emotional responses.” (Kindle Location 17)
“Outside I turned to see a strand of her blonde hair hanging suspended in front of her with the background light from the open door illuminating it and silhouetting her face. I had always noticed her in that way, even when we were children. To me Jackie had always evoked images such as apparition of a dream, or the subject of a portrait, or as the kind of feeling only written about in poems.” (Kindle Location 105)
“Outside the world went by in the form of passing light and shadow.” (Kindle Location 397)
“Outside the gate, turning toward the distant train station, I walked along the side of the road. Above me bright lines of sunlight streamed through the crooked limbs of the cottonwood trees and the rustling sound of the leaves came, riding on a light wind coming off the lake. Sheltered from the curling breezes and feeling the warm sun on my face, all at once I began to feel happy and unafraid.” (Kindle Location 10932)
About the Author: Ryan O’Reilly is the author of two books; Snapshot and To Nourish and Consume. He was an English Literature major at Westminster College in Fulton Missouri. Today he is a member of the National Writers Association and the Writers League of Texas. O’Reilly travels the world as a freelance writer and author. You can find out more about him or find his Facebook and Twitter links on his website.
Note: I received this book for review from the author and the publishing company for free to review. In no way did this effect what I said about the book, the author or the rating that I gave the book.
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