Reservation Road, John Burnham Schwartz
Reservation Road, John Burnham Schwartz
List: $20.00 | Sale: $14.00
Club: $10.00

Reservation Road

Author: John Burnham Schwartz

Narrator: Various

Unabridged: 9 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/27/2007

Synopsis

“Haunting. . . . A powerful and affecting novel.”–The New York Times

A tragic accident sets in motion a cycle of violence and retribution in John Burnham Schwartz’s riveting novel RESERVATION ROAD. Two haunted men and their families are engulfed by the emotions surrounding an unexpected and horrendous death. Ethan, a respected professor of literature at a small New England college, is wracked by an obsession with revenge that threatens to tear his family apart. Dwight, a man at once fleeing his crime and hoping to get caught, wrestles with overwhelming guilt and his sense of obligation to his son. As these two men’s lives unravel, RESERVATION ROAD moves to its startling conclusion. This is an astonishing tale of love and loss, rage and redemption, that is as suspenseful as it is emotionally compelling.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Fabian on September 02, 2018

It's a story we've all heard before--the loss of a child and its subsequent devastating effect on the parents. This is that story, trimmed & nicely-paced, & the conclusion, perhaps its one original point, is memorable indeed. This is no Andre Dubus III however, and it shows. The poignancy it reaches......more

Goodreads review by Will on October 10, 2011

Parallels abound. Ethan is the bereft father, Josh, his lost son. Dwight is the damaged driver, Sam his child, damaged by dad in a different way. How each copes with the aftermath is the core of the tale here. Dwight runs over a young boy, then flees the scene, fearful of the impact the accident mig......more

Goodreads review by Debby on September 21, 2012

It's hard to say you "really liked" a book about the death of a 10-yr-old boy from a hit and run. The book is narrated from 3 perspectives on the events of that night - Josh's father Ethan, Josh's mother Grace and Dwight the guy who hit Josh and kept on driving. Why? What will happen to each of them......more

Goodreads review by Nick on March 11, 2019

This was a powerful and affecting read - mainly due to the subject (how the death of a ten year-old boy in a hit and run accident affects the families of the bereaved and the guilty party who did not stop) but much credit is due also to the starkness, the rawness, the sadness of the writing. It was......more

Goodreads review by Webster on May 20, 2013

I picked this book because I thought it was something completely different. I thought it was the book they made the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio about, Revolutionary Road. It was a silly mistake and after a little bit of confusion I continued on. There was a major problem with the book, dealing with......more

Quotes

"This is a shattering book, imagined with startling emotional precision and generosity. And though it begins in catastrophe, Reservation Road turns out to be a kind of map of connectedness: Touch a child here and the whole world trembles out of orbit; everyone bleeds; finally, perhaps, after great pain, everyone heals. John Burnham Schwartz is awfully young to own this much wisdom, but there it is, on every page."
--Rosellen Brown

"A powerful and affecting novel...haunting...highly suspenseful...compelling to read."
--Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Spellbinding...a haunting tale"
--Booklist

"A poignant thriller...quietly breathtaking...a suspenseful literary novel"
--Betsey Osborne, Vanity Fair

"A pleasure to read. Suspense is redefined here..."
--Sandra Scofield, Newsday

"A lovely book, full of life and feeling"
--Peter Matthiessen

"One of those rare--very rare--novels that you don't so much read as inhabit...But it's the novel's conclusion, as perfect as it is sudden, shocking and completely unexpected, that will stick in your memory."        
--Tom Dehaven, Entertainment Weekly

"A beautiful novel. An important novel"
--David Bowman, New York Observer

"Both a beautiful, wrenching story of redemption, and a novel of exquisite suspense"
--Anne Lamott

"A first-rate work of fiction disguised as a page-turning thriller"
--David Halberstam

"An unexpected pleasure...It will leave the reader entranced as well as moved."
--Erica Noonan, Boston Herald

"A non-stop read...a wonderful writer"
--Ward Just

"A triumph of form, pacing and power...character-driven as it is, it reads like a thrille, swift and complete."
--Kit Reed, New York Times Book Review

"It possesses a conclusion of such power that it would be a literary crime to reveal it."
--Deirdre Donahue, USA Today

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