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Rating: 
Summary: A Beautiful Follow-Up
Review: It looks like I'm the first person to review this novel, so let me start by saying that I don't know Michael Byers or his publishers, and I have no vested interest in the success of his book. You can trust me, then, when I tell you how much I enjoyed it. I admired Byers's first book, The Coast of Good Intentions, tremendously---perhaps the richest, most tender and humane story collection of the past five years---and I have been wondering for some time when we would see something new from him. Now I see why it's taken so long. Long for This World is a big, delicately rendered book with a deep and expansive sense of its characters and the world they inhabit. It has all the strengths of his story collection. The prose is easy and precise, polished in a way that never calls too much attention to itself, and the people he creates never seem less than authentic. A few of his characters are science fiction readers, and while there are none of the conventional trappings of science fiction in this book, occasionally a mood of fantasy creeps in at the very edges, as though the world is threatening to burst open and become something no one ever could have expected. Michael Byers isn't the sort of writer who can do everything (the momentum of his stories can be very slow, and I'll confess that there are times when my interest in Long for This World seemed to lag behind his own), but what he does do, he does very, very well. That is, he lends careful, sympathetic consideration to the minds of his characters and to every detail and color of what passes through them. His books seem to be written according to the same philosophy that's expressed by one of his characters toward the end of the novel---"not that it was bad luck to waste things, but that anything that existed was too precious to waste." The best thing about Long for This World is that it makes you experience that preciousness for yourself.
Rating: 
Summary: Sloppy research, but a great book!
Review: What a wonderful book! The characters are very well done. I chose this book because I suffer from a chronic disease (and hope for a cure), but then I enjoyed Ilse's immigrant points of view, having met my US husband in Europe myself (I'm from Germany).However, I would have expected better research of Ilse's background: Ilse's mother gives her marks when Ilse leaves for Paris - but the currency of Austria used to be the Schilling, not the Deutsche Mark (now it's the Euro). When Ilse speaks German, it sounds like straight out of a dictionary - no grammar knowledge whatsoever. And so on and on... Byers knows how to write and does it very well, so maybe he just needs an assistant for the research part. Despite its shortcomings, I loved the book and will recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Do not miss this novel.
Review: What a wonderful surprise this book is! Michael Byers shows that he can bring his gift for short-story writing to a novel, and the characters explode deep and fully-developed from the first line and grow from there. The result is a very fine and moving read. Henry Moss is a research doctor working on Hickman, a condition that causes children to age rapidly and die prematurely. As he tests the DNA of a new patient's family, he discovers that the boy's 17-year-old brother has a blood mutation that might permit him to stop the syndrome's deadly progress. He is faced with the most human of dilemmas when he must decide whether to try the new enzyme on a dying child before testing is even begun. A very kind and decent man, Henry is wracked by the possibilities he faces: he may lose his license, he may save a life, or he may become incredibly rich-a possibility he sees all around him in mid-90's Seattle where the book is set. Everyone in "Long for this World" is a marvelous creation. Henry's Austrian wife, Ilse, has a story of her own and a martinet mom who has moved to a nearby condo. His daughter is a gifted athlete, and his son a sweet, goofy 14-year-old. You become engrossed in the lives of his favorite Hickman patient and his family, and in the family of the strange atypical-positive teenager who is the catalyst for so much hope. "Long for this World" will entrance everyone who picks it up because of its humanity, humor, and warmth. This is exemplary fiction not to be missed.
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