Review: Enon by Paul Harding

[inksomniareads]

started reading this yesterday, somewhere around 3pm and in total it took about 4 hours to read. I didn’t know until I

started poking around about it, that it is what I guess would be considered a companion to the author’s other novel

Tinkers, as the main character is the great (great?) grandson of the character in that novel. Which is kind of cool, and

since I did enjoy Enon, I’ll probably pick up Tinkers at some point as well.


Enon tells the story of a man - Charlie Crosby - and his very quick spiral downward after the death of his daughter. I

would call it a character study, as we focus only on Charlie and his dealing after he buries his kid. From day one this man

steps off a ledge and stays falling, right up until the very end.

They say there are 5 stages of grief, but I think Charlie hovers somewhere around anger and denial. He knows his kid is

dead, but he doesn’t deal with it. He doesn’t actually grieve. He deals by not taking care of himself. And you know,

right from the beginning, even as he listens to the voicemail from his wife telling him that his kid is dead, that things

aren’t going to end well for him. And he knows that he’s not and is not going to grieve the way he should. And of course

no one can tell anyone else how they should mourn a loss, especially a parent who is burying their kid, but this guy

tumbles into a madness and becomes unhealthy.

He gains an obsession, and when he buries his kid he loses everything that made him who he was. His wife leaves him,

which I think was bound to happen eventually, and the loss of their daughter is only the wheel that set it in motion.

There clearly had been some issues there, and if she hadn’t died, I think they would have gotten divorced. But, he didn’t

exactly do anything to make his wife stay either, insofar as suggesting she leave, knowing full well he’d never see her

again. He didn’t want to work at his marriage, he wanted nothing more than for his kid to come back and becomes of

this his life become nothing but a mess.

I wasn’t expecting anything good to come of this. An hour away from the ending (I read it on my Kindle and it tells you

how much time you have left), I kind of figured he would go the way his daughter did. He would do something and end

his life, in the hopes of seeing her again. It was kind of inevitable, really, and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised.


I was actually kind of hoping for it, for him to finally just put himself out of his misery. He knew exactly what he was

doing, even when he was under the influence or dreaming or just going throughout his routine, he knew exactly what

was going on and what he was doing to himself, and he didn’t care. And while I think it was kind of just a little bit

rotten that his wife left (even if at his urging), if she had stayed it wouldn’t have made a difference. Her life would

have been worse for wear because of his actions, her own grieving process would have been interrupted because of what

he was doing to himself.

I found myself wondering where his friends were, his clients from his job if he had any that were steady, where were his

neighbors? No one thought to check up on him? Except once, when his daughter’s friend’s mother came by with a

lasagna early on and was never seen again. Did no one think to go check on this man, whose daughter had just died and

whose wife had just left and who nobody had seen for a really long time? But I knew it wouldn’t have made a difference,

anyway. He didn’t care, so even if the entire neighborhood had stopped by it wouldn’t have made a difference. He had

to want to live.

I give it a 4 out of 5 stars, I really did enjoy it. I liked the writing style and there were a couple of places I would have

sticky-noted had I been reading a physical copy. It was a nice step inside the mind of a man dealing with grief, especially

the loss of a daughter. I don’t think that’s something we ever really see, at least in my experience, it’s always from the

mindset of the mother. Too often men are thought of as these tough dudes who don’t feel pain and who don’t cry and

who have to be strong for their wives, etc. But that isn’t always the case, and they suffer pain and loss just like women

do, and while I hope Charlie’s case isn’t par for the course, I have no doubt it happens. And I think it’s a good thing,

bringing this out into the light like that. Definitely recommended!