cover image OUR SAVAGE

OUR SAVAGE

Matt Pavelich, . . Avalon/Shoemaker & Hoard, $24 (288pp) ISBN 978-1-59376-023-6

Difficult to classify, this striking, perplexing first novel is made up of stories that swirl around its strange protagonist and his picaresque adventures. In the darkness of the mid–19th-century Balkan hinterlands, Danilo Lazich's birth kills his mother; he is simply too large a baby for her to bear and live. The giant of a child eventually becomes an infamous young highwayman and travels to Vienna, where he is "collected" by the Empress Elisabeth, who employs him as a bodyguard and physical curiosity over her husband's objections. As the clouds of war gather in the region, Danilo, now known as Daniel Savage, marries the spinster daughter of an innkeeper and sometimes revolutionary. Her dowry is a ticket to Montana, where Savage, now calling himself Danny, takes his ill-tempered bride. There he becomes involved in the lives of the region's miners, then relocates to Wyoming, where he turns himself into a feared and respected entrepreneur. What saves the novel from becoming an unsatisfactory leapfrog through time and space and a simple showcase for Savage's superior intellect and rapacious curiosity is Pavelich's lyricism and original wit. Sketches of minor characters are evocative and memorable, although all too often these characters are abandoned before they are fully integrated into the story. Plot connections are frequently skipped as the story breaks off, then resumes awkwardly and bewilderingly in a different place and different time. The result is a frustrating sense of incompletion, though Pavelich's stylistic flourishes and cunning vignettes give the novel flair. (Apr. 1)