Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Richard Paul Evan's "The Walk"...A Book Review

Cover image for The Walk

Several weeks ago I listened to an audiobook written and narrated by Richard Paul Evans. It was The Road to Grace. I blogged about this book after I finished it. When I downloaded it I didn't know it was the third book in the series. Even without knowing that, I enjoyed it very much. It was an engaging story on its own.

Yesterday I started listening to the first book in the series, The Walk.

It's a great little read.

In fact, it reminded me of a 1970s TV show, The Incredible Hulk. But more on that later.

The Walk explains how Alan Christoffersen became a solitary figure, a broken man walking from one end of the continent to the other. The third book lets us know about the trials Alan has faced; the first book tells us about those trails in detail. We experience the heartache of loss, the pain of betrayal, the feeling that all is lost. Because, to Alan, all is lost. It takes a long walk for him to discover otherwise.

The book can be seen as an anthology, similar to what Kevin J. Anderson and Neil Peart did in their excellent book, Clockwork Lives. We learn of other's life stories as they interact with Alan. They trust a man who wanders from city to city, small town to hamlet.

Which brings me to The Incredible Hulk. For those of you remember the Bill Bixby production, a lonely man--a man who had lost everything--wanders from episode to episode fixing other's problems and using his own demons to do it. Does Alan Christoffersen turn into a massive green monster? No, but he does help others and used his own pain to do so.

It's a great little read.

1 comment:

  1. Super review. Never thought of the Incredible Hulk angle. Thank you for sharing with us..well done!!

    ReplyDelete