Jess Walter’s new novel, So Far Gone, features a crusty main character named Rhys Kinnick. After the former reporter decides he’s had it with politics, modern life and his radical right-wing son-in-law, he goes off the grid to a ramshackle house in the Washington woods.
“At some point,” Kinnick says, “you look around and think, ‘I don’t belong here anymore. I don’t want to have anything to do with any of this.’”
So there he lives for seven years, until his grandchildren arrive at his front door with a neighbor of their mother’s. Bethany wanted a break, the neighbor explains, and she left instructions to take the kids to her father’s house. Kinnick doesn’t even recognize them at first, but he reluctantly takes them in and drives the youngest, Asher, to a youth chess tournament. That’s when two goons show up, grab the kids and deliver them to the aforementioned son-in-law at a compound run by the Church of the Blessed Fire.
The rest of the novel is a madcap, suspenseful and often hilarious ride through the Pacific Northwest, with Kinnick trying to rescue his grandchildren and get them back to their mother. He rounds up a few friends to help, including a foul-mouthed former colleague and old flame, a manic private investigator, and his Native American buddy, Brian.
Walter’s style evokes Kurt Vonnegut or Richard Russo. The ridiculous shenanigans remind me of another favorite from this year, Annie Hartnett’s The Road to Tender Hearts. But the real genius of this novel is Walter’s talent for relating our fractured modern society with humor and hope.
