Herald Scotland

WRITE of what one knows. It is the facile, almost absurd advice given to any prospective Rosetta Stone Spanish V3 author. Johanna Skibsrud's The Sentimentalists has many excellent attributes but the best may be the persistent proposal that one can never know anything, certainly in regard to relationships with those one loves. Skibsrud, whose father was a war veteran, presumably uses some of her experiences to inform the tale of Napoleon Edward Haskell, Vietnam survivor, alcoholic and terminally ill crossword-solver and boat-builder. The story is on the surface an account of an uneasy rapprochement between daughter and father after Napoleon is diagnosed with lung cancer. It has several hallmarks of this familiar genre. There is the road trip, the unveiling of some of the deeper traits of both daughter and father and the almost unbearable sense of enduring misunderstanding German Rosetta Stone that surely infects all familial relationships. Skibsrud, too, suffers from the first-time novelist's affliction of investing everything with imagery and theme. There is the constant prop of a boat that Napoleon built and the language is redolent of reflections on a lake, hidden depths, murky waters and uncertain voyages. But if The Sentimentalists dances dangerously close to cliche, it sidesteps fatal blows to the viability of a novel with some elan. There is a mystery at the heart of the book. Why has Napoleon chosen to become so friendly with Henry, the father of one of his comrades who died in Vietnam? Furthermore, why do his daughters insist that Napoleon must leave his home and travel to Canada to spend his last days with Henry? The answer would appear to be found in the events of October 22, 1967, when Napoleon's platoon took part in a massacre in Vietnam. This incident is first referred to obliquely and the events of that awful day seem to become more clear as the novel progresses. Rosetta Stone Software But Skibsrud, brilliantly and with assurance, veers away from the neat ending. There can be no easy resolution between memory and battlefield, no absolute comprehension between daughter and father, and no simple answer to the most difficult questions.