Great Writing, But Flawed Narrative!

                           "Inland," Tea Obreht's second novel, is a Western, but with all all the magical realism, mysticism, and equivocal doings that marked her first, "The Tiger's Wife."  It tells the stories of Nora Lark and her family, living in the Arizona Territory, circa 1893, as well as that of Lurie, a former outlaw, on the lam from killing a boy in New York and, on the Lark farm with Nora, a girl named Josie with mysterious, paranormal abilities.

                             I kept reading this book in frustration, wondering if these stories and characters would ever connect.  They do, near the end, but in a way I had not anticipated.

                               That is because, for all its resemblance to Cormac McCarthy, "Inland" is still as different from him as it can get.  There are no violent graphics and the use of the paranormal is completely typical Obreht.  Her prose is still detailed and dense, but is worth slogging through.

                                In the end, the novel turns out to be something far from what the reader might have expected, and the last sentence leaves one stranded in ambiguity.

                                Still, a worthy follow up novel.  Obreht is just compelling and clever enough to make me want to see what she will come up with next.

                                  Even if that takes another eight years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!