The Current

I bought The Current based on a glowing review in the local paper. I'm not a huge reader, so this was a big deal for me. The book is not what I had hoped for. It took 200 pages for the real story to kick in. The first 200 were a mish mash of confusing--and largely pointless--introductions and needless back stories.It was hard to keep track of who was who. Compounding matters, the chapters are only 2 to 5 or so pages long. It flips back and forth and jumps all around. Sometimes it's hard to follow what is happening, where, and when it's taking place. Past? Present? At one point a character seems to be having conversations with his dead wife, with no clarity or explanation.Once the plot actually kicked in, the book was tough to put down, even with implausible, if not impossible, happenings, like a main character falling in the river, being exposed to water during a Minnesota winter, then going downstream UNDER the ice for a 1/4 mile then having the strength to swim against the current of a dam spillway and pull herself to shore, then walk around, soaked, in the winter, and live to tell the tale. Impossible. Then the end ended up being confusing and disappointing. What actually happened? Was the whole thing just an accident? And why was there no resolution or explanation to one of the key characters just vanishing?Lots of potential here, just too much going on and unanswered questions. Disappointed.

I just amazes me that a book like this can get on the NY Times Bestseller List. The author has no concept of story. There are pieces of the plot all over but he does a very poor job of putting them together. In the end, almost nothing is wrapped up and you are left totally confused as to why he even wrote this book.His writing style doesn't help either. He seems to think that overly verbose and overly embellished phrases make him a great author - but it just leaves you confused and wishing he would "just say it". The book also jumps all around time-wise which doesn't help his already anemic plot. The two river events 10 years apart do NOT get connected other than that the girl from the second accident investigates the first accident. There is no real common thread between the two accidents and, in fact, the second one is never resolved. If you want to good sample of his poor overdone writing style read chapter 39 (pages 222-223). Don't read the book like I did always thinking it will get better. It doesn't.

Readers counting on a fast-paced, plot-driven linear mystery that sprints to a neatly tied and blood-soaked bow will be sorely disappointed. However, if you like your crime dramas literary and lush, with contoured characters, atmospheric prose, and penetrating themes, then you’ve come to the right book.Ten years ago, in a small Minnesota town, nineteen-year-old Holly Burke was found dead in the cold current of the Black Root River. The now retired sheriff, Tom Sutter, failed to close the case due to insufficient evidence on his main suspect, Danny Young, which angered Holly’s father, Gordon, and left him resentful on top of his depression.Now, in the dead of winter, Sutter’s daughter, Audrey, and her friend, Caroline, are driving from a southern college to Audrey’s house, when the car they are in is forcibly propelled into the same icy river, this time across the border in Iowa. Audrey survives, but not without survivor’s guilt, PTSD, and a broken arm, among other injuries. While her terminally ill father stands by (but gets involved), his former deputy, Moran, is now the Iowan sheriff investigating this case, legally requiring Tom to take a back seat and relinquish control of solving the crime. But of course he just can’t easily do thatThis new case that eerily parallels the previous one inflames icy memories in a community weighted with unresolved grief, never quite thawed. It affects three different families and reconnects them in powerful and unexpected ways. Both Gordon and now Tom are shot through with guilt due to their failure to protect their daughters from danger, albeit ten years apart. Danny Young was compelled to leave town a decade ago and abandon his twin brother, Marky, who has special needs. Their mother, Rachel, had a personal and professional bond with Gordon that was permanently severed when Holly died. Danny’s inconclusive guilt and indeterminate innocence preys on all involved.As Audrey gets her strength back, she refuses to stand passively by, and her grit and guts to participate in finding the perpetrator(s) generate stunning, personal intersections that cross red lines and drive the plot. Themes of grief, guilt, secrets, and lies pervade the text and threaten to undo a community, or hopefully heal those in need. Between the ennui of stalled conflicts, the provocation of awakened animosities, and a courageous collaboration of the seemingly mismatched, a current is forged as strong as the Black Root River itself and rallies a new resolve. But don’t ask for all your questions to be answered succinctly.As Johnston demonstrated in DESCENT, he is a master of the elegiac and the atmospheric, the haunting and the harrowing, spectacles and subtleties. As a reader, you’ll sink your teeth into his prose. He leaves a lot to chew on in his melancholy and emboldened narrative. There’s just the right bits of levity, too, in the sharp wit and dialogue. This is a book to savor, to be patient with in its languid current.“On and on under the ice, in the strange light, your fingertips slipping along the underside of the ice and the girls coming and going like the curious creatures they are, the moon following, and it’s two minutes or it’s two hours or it’s ten years…ten years and ten thousand years all the same thing to the world and only one creature in all its history ever keeping track, ever thinking of such a thing as time—ever desiring it or fearing it or losing it, and that was why you’d come home in the first place, because you were running out of time…”