Turnaway

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

One man's impulse to pursue innocence and beauty drives Browner's enchanting and offbeat second novel (after Conglomeros). The tale is narrated by Ben Givens, a misanthropic urbanite in his early 30s who, through a freakish boating accident, is marooned on Turnaway, an unmapped 20-acre island off Manhattan. There, he meets an elderly doctor and his ward, Elias Hutchinson, 29, who pretends the 20th century doesn't exist and spends his time reminiscing about the glory days of the Siwanoy, a Native American tribe of which he claims to be the last living member. Attracted to Elias's pure-hearted simplicity, Ben invites him to Manhattan, where Elias can pursue the chimera of his ideal mate. To his credit, Browner never succumbs to easy clichs about the noble savage visiting the big city: Elias remains true to himself but is able to navigate the concrete canyons with remarkable ease. When the last of the Siwanoys meets Emily Wolfe-the true love he has long dreamed of-she returns his affections immediately, leaving Ben to wonder how intimacy has eluded him for so long. Browner pulls off the audacious feat of creating a wickedly comic tale that's also a heartfelt paean to the glories of friendship and nostalgia, and to the mythmaking impulse in us all. (May)

Library Journal

Ben Givene, who was raised in foster homes, has almost always shied away from human contact. When he is compensated for a subway accident in which he was badly injured, he is able to retire from active social involvement and spends his time painting and prowling New York Harbor in a power dinghy. When his dinghy capsizes during a storm, he makes his way to an unmapped island off Manhattan, where he is rescued by a strange man, a doctor and probable Holocaust survivor. The man lives in an old Victorian house, and his brother claims to be the last member of the Siwanoy tribe, the island's original inhabitants. At first Ben considers them cranks, but they are about to change his life and teach him lessons about the heart, the need for human closeness, and innocence and commitment. This comic work by the author of Conglomeros (Random, 1992) eventually turns deadly serious. The characters will linger in readers' minds long after the novel is finished. Recommended for most popular collections.-Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.

June Vigor

When his dinghy, the "Spirit of New York", founders in a storm, unemployed misanthrope Ben Givens washes ashore on the rocky beach of Turnaway Island off the coast of Manhattan. He is taken in by the island's sole human inhabitants--Austrian physician Joseph Ross and an eccentric young recluse, Elias Hutchinson, who claims to be the last living member of the Siwanoy Algonquian tribe. Ben and Elias become friends, despite Elias' willful ignorance of the teeming metropolis across the water. He prefers to imagine the mainland as the fertile hunting ground of his ancestors, a conceit that Ben, a dedicated urbanite, finds alarming in its naivete. When Elias decides that the city holds the key to the Siwanoys' continued survival, Ben is eager to introduce him to New York's gritty pleasures. Elias' reaction forms the basis of the story, but it is Ben's voice that stays with the reader. Alternately lyrical and peevishly blunt, his narration always rings true.

Kirkus Reviews

A somber fable that offers a disturbing and persuasive portrait of the corrosive anomie of modern life as its effects are reflected in two very different people.

Ben Givens, the hard-bitten narrator of Browner's second novel (after Conglomeros, 1992), is cast up on tiny Turnaway Island (in the East River, just off the shoreline of Manhattan) when his boat sinks. The island's only inhabitants (and its owners) are the elderly, austere Dr. Joseph Ross and Elias Hutchinson, a 29-year- old man who is part wild child, part self-assured scholar. Elias, whose father was a famous anthropologist, has grown up believing that he is the last member of the Siwanoy, a tribe of Native Americans largely exterminated by the first white settlers of Manhattan. He spends part of each day attempting to live much as his purported ancestors did, and the rest of the time researching and writing scholarly articles about them. Givens, bitter, angry, suspicious, is appalled that Elias has never left the island. He's at first suspicious of Elias's mix of acute intelligence and intractable sweetness and generosity, only gradually letting his guard down. Then, motivated by a mixture of envy and affection, he lures Elias to Manhattan, determined to yank him out of the unreal vision of the past in which he lives. Inevitably, Givens's actions set in motion a series of disasters that come close to destroying them both. Browner's portrait of Manhattan as a sterile, vacuous, violent place, and of Givens, the ultimate self-involved city- dweller, are exact and ferocious, and provide a resonant contrast with Elias's descriptions of the pastoral life of the Siwanoy. Elias's descent into heartbreak (he is not, as it turns out, an Indian) and madness (his island refuge is seized by the city) is both believable and moving.

Browner's first novel was a savage satire of modern life. His second, more meditative, is nonetheless a powerful, ingenious work, further evidence that a writer of considerable talent has emerged.