Small World

August 1, 2021

From the beloved author of West of Here, this inventive new work parallels train travelers in the early 1800s and their present-day descendants, with the narrative unfolding in the Pacific Northwest. Accented here: the immigrant experience and what it has meant for the United States.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 8, 2021
Evison’s ambitious if overlong latest (after Legends of the North Cascades) tells the stories of a train’s passengers and their ancestors after a disastrous crash. In 2019, veteran conductor Walter Bergen embarks from Portland, Ore., to Seattle, his final journey on the Amtrak payroll. Estranged from his family for decades, Bergen is a simple train-loving man who adores his wife Annie, and is also, as shown in one of the novel’s many descriptive passages set in the mid-19th century, a descendant of Chicago Irish twin orphans. Malik, a passenger and a young basketball star heading toward a prized invitational, is a descendent of an enslaved person. After the train crashes, Malik pleads with Walter to help his injured mother. There’s also Jenny, a corporate consultant and descendent of Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs; and Laila, a Native American, who is fleeing an abusive husband. While some of the historical details and the characters’ relationships to one another feel a bit scattered, Evison’s depiction of the characters’ family histories builds significance as contemporary racial inequalities and class disparities are brought into relief against those of the 1850s. “America was a rigged competition,” one character remarks, firmly setting the tone and cadence of Evison’s expansive saga. It’s baggy, but still thick with insights. Agent: Mollie Glick, Creative Artists Agency.

Starred review from October 15, 2021
A train accident reveals the connections among a host of people across race, class, history, and the country in this ambitious epic. Evison's seventh novel opens by giving away the climax: Walter, a train operator working his final run for Amtrak, is at the center of a wreck on the way to Seattle. But despite making the worlds-in-collision setup clear early, Evison has still crafted a suspenseful novel, as he shuttles between the train's riders in 2019 and their forebears in the 1850s. Walter is a descendent of Nora and Finn, Irish twins orphaned in Chicago. Malik, a rising high school basketball star, is a descendent of George, an escaped slave. Jenny, a hard-charging corporate fixer (she supervised Amtrak buyouts that, it's implied, led to the crash), descends from Wu Chen, a Chinese immigrant who parlayed a small stash of gold into a thriving business. And Laila, escaping her abusive husband, is descended from Luyu, a Miwok woman who's absorbed White people's condescension or brutality. Bouncing among the characters in brief chapters, Evison gives the story a sprightly, page-turner feel despite the sizable cast he's assembled. And the story thrives because his eye for the particulars of each character's life is so sharp: Finn's work on farms and railroads, Laila's anxiety over escaping her husband, Malik's mother's desperate efforts to make ends meet for her son's sake. So when their lives do wind up intersecting on the train, Evison's novel feels less like we're-all-connected sentimentality than a compassionate vision of a pluralistic country that ought to dignify everybody. Though politics aren't explicit in the novel, it's plainly a response to an era that's created dividing lines across the country. Without being simplistic or wearing rose-colored glasses, Evison suggests a fresh way of recognizing our relationships without melting-pot clich�s. A bighearted, widescreen American tale.

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Starred review from November 1, 2021
Evison has published a string of superb novels, veering from portraiture (Lawn Boy, 2018) to landscape (Legends of the North Cascades, 2021), so it is thrilling to see the talent, ambition, and execution coalesce in this masterpiece. The narrative shifts between two timelines. A mid-nineteenth-century backstory introduces many characters, including two orphaned Irish fraternal twins who become separated, a runaway slave who finds love but must forever look over his shoulder, a Chinese immigrant who finds fortune mining for gold but is haunted by a violent act, and Luyu ("wild dove"), an independent spirit of the Miwok nation who, true to her name, rejects the comfy square abode of her adoptive family. The modern-day story line follows their respective descendants as they navigate soul-crushing jobs, abusive partners, and the ever-elusive American Dream. Compelled by expectations, driven by dreams achievable and deferred, each character displays the fierce fortitude and stubborn resilience that define the American spirit. The sweeping panorama is the perfect canvas on which Evison explores the diversity of the nation's character while limning contours and adding textures to bring to vivid life his memorable characters. Such masterful strokes seem to qualify Small World as the quintessential Great American Novel as Evison eloquently shows that perhaps the most authentically American ideal is the ongoing, blended palette of stories.

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