Executive Times
		2007 Book Reviews
		Finn by Jon Clinch
Rating:			***
		(Recommended)
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	Pap Jon Clinch’s debut novel, Finn, is the story of Huck’s father, Pap. With respect to Mark Twain, but with a writing style distinctly his own, Clinch fleshes out Pap as a dark character, and presents the depths of his darkness in vivid, often gruesome detail. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter 4, pp. 28-30: Dixon’s wife, from the back room, pitching her voice above the noontime sizzle of catfish in oil: “You tell him we’ve got all we need today. I won’t be encouraging that one.” Finn cannot help but hear, for whatever his other faults and failures he is not deaf, and Dixon lifts his shoulders in apology but takes the best of the man’s reed-wrapped bounty all the same, making a note of where this transaction has left the complex calculus of their financial entanglements. “I done read about that boy of your’n.” Finn decides he’s misheard, nods toward the whiskey jug, and ignores the man’s words for all his recent generosity and demonstrated, if sub-rosa, willingness to defy the instructions of his wife, a harridan as famous for her temper as for her fried catfish. “Quite a fortune he’s landed himself in.” Which gets Finn’s attention at once and allows Dixon’s earlier sentence to coalesce in his mind all over again, properly this time and with undeniable weight. “Where you been reading about Huck?” Dixon draws the weekly newspaper from underneath the bar and places it square before Finn, where it would serve better as a placemat. With a stubby finger he points to a black funnel of headline and sub-headline and boldfaced text the gist of which Finn can make out despite his youthful avoidance of the schoolhouse and his willful lifelong neglect of such book-learned skills as he could not help but have acquired: Boys, Gold, Fortune, Caves, Indian, Murder. “I ain’t heard.” Dixon places his whiskey on the bar. “Guess he’s fixed, that Huck.” “I guess.” Finn sips at the whiskey. “Him and that other boy, that Sawyer.” “So they say.” “Found a regular fortune in gold, they did.” “How much?” He draws the index finger of his left hand down the page as though he could locate the figure even if he hunted for it all night, as though his finger were a divining rod tuned to dowse the facts from this dry desert of language. “Six thousand.” “Go on.” “Right there, boss.” Pointing to the number. “Twelve altogether between him and the other’n. That makes six each.” “Good God.” “I know it.” “Whereabouts?” “Them old caves, south of St. Pete.” “I seen them.” Finn drinks the whiskey in silence, shakes his head, and studies the paper. After a while he speaks. “Funny.” “What?” “Looks like I’ll be getting my inheritance after all, don’t it? Only it come upstream instead of down.” “Looks like.” Finn tilts his head back and closes his eyes and pours the whiskey down his throat like the veriest medicine. Then he sits up straight, deposits the glass on the bar, and indicates a bottle on the backshelf. “I believe I’ll be drinking the good stuff from this day forward.” He touches the glass with a finger or two, urging it toward Dixon. His eyes are watery. “I’ll stand you one, Finn.” “By way of celebration.” “By way of celebration.” Dixon pours. “Leave that bottle.” “Now Finn.” “Just leave it.” “I oughtn’t.” Finn looks past Dixon toward the back room. “Suit yourself,” he says, with a cracked smile that lasts too long and then vanishes too suddenly. He turns his attention to the whiskey and works on it for a while, methodically as a banker. He labors over it without any special appreciation, but as if he means to burn its impression into his palate for use under circumstances when such drink as he can get is of far lesser quality. “That boy,” he says after a while. “That boy.” “God love him, Dix.” “I know it.” “He’s lucky I didn’t sell him a long time ago.” “Reckon you both are.” “That’s a fact,” says Finn. Chapters aren’t set sequentially, so readers are either seeing action develop, or receiving past stories that fill in context and detail. Finn is a promising debut novel. Steve Hopkins, April 25, 2007
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	2007 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for this book appeared in the May 2007 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Finn.htm For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 Phone: 708-466-4650 • Fax: 708-386-8687 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com www.hopkinsandcompany.com