Mr. Was - Pete Hautman

The story starts off with an author's note, saying of how the story which came out of notebooks previously in his father's possession sounded as though it could be true. By the end of the book, I found myself nearly convinced that it was.

The story is written from the point of view of John Lund, some of it as him as an elderly old man writing in notebooks to tell the story of his life, some journal entries of him in his youth, and some as medical reports. I will not elaborate, as it gives away too much, but there is a variety of script styles in the story that all flows well together.

Hautman has the uncanny talent to write vividly with simple language, his diction perfected to the point a few words paints an entire, detailed image in the reader's mind. Not unnecessarily wordy as some authors, or painfully simple as others, I believe Hautman has mastered word choice equilibrium.

Mr. Was follows the life of its protagonist, who, as mentioned before, is John Lund. His ailing grandfather is on his deathbed at the beginning of his story, and his mother insists that they go see him. However, the moment his feeble grandfather sees him, he reaches out and attempts to strangle him before dying from the strain. The words he utters during the act are haunting. "Kill you. Kill you. Kill you again."

At the funeral, he hears a voice muttering "what goes around comes around what goes around comes around what goes around comes around" over and over, but when he turns, there is no one there. Then his parents begin to speak to someone invisible to him. What's going on?

Mr. Was is a story of time travel, which alone might have been enough to turn me off. In my experience, time travel stories become very messy very quickly, such things coming to mind as, "Wait, if he did that, he would have never been born, and if he had never been born, he would have never done that, meaning he would have been born, but if he was born then he would have done that and never been born and never have done that." Does your head hurt yet? Of course, that doesn't happen in Mr. Was as far as I can see. Everything, every detail I can recall clicks together at the end of the story. Everything comes full circle, everything makes sense.

I strongly recommend this book. It is a refreshing, quick read that left me deeply pensive and in awe.

Weishan Chin

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