Alice Archer -The Infinite Onion

Grant Eastbrook hit the ground crawling after his wife kicked him out. Six months later, in Seattle without a job or a place to live, he escapes to the woods of nearby Vashon Island to consider his options. When he’s found sleeping outdoors by a cheerful man who seems bent on irritating him to death, Grant’s plans to resuscitate his life take a peculiar turn.
Oliver Rossi knows how to keep his fears at bay. He’s had years of practice. As a local eccentric and artist, he works from his funky home in the deep woods, where he thinks he has everything he needs. Then he rescues an angry man from a rainy ditch and discovers a present worth fighting the past for.
Amid the buzz of high summer, unwelcome attraction blooms on a playing field of barbs, defenses, and secrets.

Comment: One more case in which a recommendation by a reader somewhere made me look for this book and the blurb sounded appealing, and that is why I've decided to try it.

In this book, Grant is a 38 year old who never seemed to reach his full potential, which is why, in part, his wife divorced him and why he is just now quitting his menial job. He decides to squat at his ex's brothers' cabin while he thinks about what to do. He isn't aware of the security cameras which is why his former brother in law finds him, but not before Grant's life reaches rock bottom, without money nor a place to stay and to make it worse, the eccentric neighbor of the propriety next door, Oliver, seems to pity him.

Oliver is convinced he can help Grant, but only if he demonstrates he is eager to change, and Oliver decides to make a deal with him, conveniently forgetting he has issues of his own. As the two of them start a game of pull and push, too many things come to the surface and not all of them are things they truly want to deal with. However, as their connection deepens, so do the stakes if they both fail.. after all, who will save whom?

This is my first book by this author and without the recommendation I probably would not have noticed it because it's not the usual type of plot I gravitate to. I mean, it did sound as if this would be a bit more introspective than what I seek, but since I sometimes like to get in this mood, I thought why not.

It turned out to be a complicated book to read and to classify, in fact. As always, one of those cases in which I liked some elements but others weren't great. I feel a little bad to not have appreciated this more, but the way the plot is structured made me struggle, at times, with what the characters were really thinking or doing. This happens because while we have the POV of both protagonists in alternated chapters, we also have their dreams and what ifs mixed up with actual situations and sometimes it was hard to distinguish what was what.

The setup is also tricky to go through because both main characters have serious issues and emotional traumas to deal with and it felt as if how they did process things throughout the story wasn't done properly. Grant is basically homeless when the story starts and he is also depressed, in my opinion. He feels he never got to identify himself with anything he did and his wife left him because he didn't try to be ambitious. I can understand how his mind state would have "told" him things that weren't right and I did feel some pity for him and for how much stress he had.

He forges a connection with some kids who live nearby, including Kai, the nephew of his ex, who still cares about him and looks up to him somehow. Grant instinctively understands Kai would want to tell him something so he makes him comfortable enough to trust him, as do the other kids. Let me tell you, this did sound a little too odd but it all serves to let us know Grant found his call, and how his quirks might have a reason to be, which is to work with kids, but the way to get there... too odd.

We also follow Oliver, an artist who seems to be helpful at first, then a little weird in how the only will help Grant if they play things the way he, Oliver, deems necessary... Oliver also "helps" others deal with traumas through artistic experiments but this sounded very insecure, after all Oliver is not a therapist and he, too, has a lot to process, so much that as things went by I started to think Oliver needed way more psychological help than Grant! It was hard to accept the idea these two would be in any condition to welcome a relationship.

The romance didn't convince me because the guys aren't in the best place, emotionally, for a real commitment to feel based on solid awareness of one another. There's also the detail that Oliver had a friend with benefits who distracted his attention throughout the novel and, honestly, I just c«didn't by it that Oliver and Grant were attracted to one another beyond the physical. I think the many secondary details about and around them were not conductive for a believable romance.

I suppose that, thinking about this book, I can say it is about accepting oneself, admitting we need help when we are at a bad place, physical and emotionally, but I wasn't captivated by it anwyay. I think the author has a very specif way of how she wanted this to be delivered, but the method isn't easy to appreciate. In real life, these two finding each other and a goal in life would be a great story of resilience, but on paper it was often boring and the events dragged and I lost interest many times. I kept going to finish because I had to know if the guys would "heal" somehow, but it wasn't a really rewarding reading experience.

Grade: 4/10