THE OTHER
By David Guterson
Alfred A. Knopf, 2008
ISBN 978-0-307-26315-5

I read Guterson’s first novel, Snow Falling on Cedars, while I was in seminary. It’s themes of life and death clung tightly to my theological studies and I have been a devotee of Guterson ever since.

Guterson’s latest work, The Other, continues his ongoing contribution to what life and death mean, and how to live in between. Unlike his previous works, The Other is written as a first person narrative, the story told by Neil Countryman, a man of my own generation.

Countryman’s narrative is a recounting of a friendship forged between himself and John William Barry. The two were an unlikely pair, Countryman being from a working class Irish family and Barry being a trust fund baby. But they met at a track meet, and the friendship worked even though they lived different lives.

Of the two, Barry was the angry one. An intelligent, thoughtful and resourceful student he believed that formal education was tantamount to being “owned.” Barry’s character is enamored of Gnosticism, a denial of the significance of all things physical (this emphasis of a spiritual/religious dimension into the plot is similar to Guterson’s work in “Our Lady of the Forest”).

The two boys become avid hikers into the backcountry of the Northwest. Both graduate and enter college, but Countryman meets a love interest, Jamie, just as college begins. I found Guterson’s narrative of the love affair between Jamie and Neil quite compelling, the best writing in the entire novel.

In college Barry’s character became angrier, more radical, and more determined while Countryman’s character edged slowly towards a more traditional lifestyle. Barry in fact dropped out of college, made a withdrawal from his trust fund, and took up residence in a remotely placed modular home. Countryman made regular pilgrimages to visit his friend.

The interesting irony in the story is that though Barry abhorred “being owned”, he seemed to own his friend Countryman. Or was it loyalty on the part of Countryman? At any rate, Countryman assisted Barry in a ruse to make his family think he had moved away to Mexico, apparently forever. The real truth was he had gone further into the woods, living as a hermit, determined not to be connected to anybody (Except Countryman) for the rest of his life.

Countryman kept his friend’s secret but it was not an easy keeping. Neither could he let his friend be, so he made continued trips, at great hardship, into the wilderness to supply his friend with a small assortment of food and literature. But the care packages were not enough, and despite his provisions and Barry’s own survival skills, Countryman made one last visit and found his friend dead. Loyal to the end, he wrapped his friend’s body in a woven bark mat and hid it deep in the cave. Other than his wife, he never told a soul.

While Countryman’s loyalty presents a conflict for the narrator, the real conflict in the novel is “How shall I live my life?” The two characters shared certain views of the world, but Countryman could not follow Barry into the woods. In the course of living his life- of falling in love, of taking a job, buying a home and raising a family, he had to decide what was important, how to live his own life and not the life dictated by his family, by society, or by necessity. A plot twist that is made evident in the opening pages and clear in the later pages adds a significant complication to that question but to the reader it will be clear that Neil Countryman made a good choice and was as loyal to the choice as he was to his friend.

Well written, thoughtful as always, and a significant contribution to our understanding of humanity.

George Pasley
August 1, 2008
Ketchikan, AK