Rules for Old Men Waiting: Book Review

Lately I've been reading more. I finished Dan Simmons's Drood, for example, the Gothic re-imagining of Charles Dickens's last five years of life. This was a very long book, and, I must say, quite good. It certainly held my attention.

After Drood, I finally picked up a slender book I've been meaning to read, off and on, for years.

When released in 2005, Peter Pouncy's Rules for Old Men Waiting won numerous awards, including the American Academy of Arts & Letters' Howard D. Vursell Memorial Award. I came across the book one day at Barnes & Noble, where it had been selected as part of their Great New Writers series (or whatever they call it).

The book is short, especially compared to mammoth works like Drood, but carries something I love about short novels: An incredible concentration of feeling. The book is only 208 pages. Yet the compassion is so thick it almost leaks out of the pages. Each sentence is written and polished and perfect. As well they should be. Peter Pouncy took his time writing the book: Twenty-three years, to be exact.

For those who are math-inclined, yes, that is nine and a half pages per year. The pace doesn't bode well for a sequel, and more's the shame, because Pouncy is a terrific writer.

Rules for Old Men Waiting was worth the wait. The story centers around Robert MacIver, an old widower, who has come to his house on the cape ("older than the Republic") to die. The ensuing 208 pages are a patchwork of creation and death, two different but ultimately entertwined aspects of life. As he waits for the end, MacIver recalls his life and his love for his wife, Margaret, and for his son, David, who have both preceded him in death.

While he waits, MacIver struggles with the violence inside him. He recalls his work as a World War I historian and scholar; his own service in World War II; and his son's service in Vietnam.

Since he is losing his life, MacIver, a grizzled old Scot, finds it hard to focus. So he formulates a list of rules: Hence the book's title.

The last rule, Rule 10, is this: Tell a story to its end.

I can't go on right now; I don't want to ruin the end of the book for those of you who might read it. But suffice to say that Rules for Old Men Waiting should be a classic piece of literature along with other great novels about love, creativity, death, and war, including Tolstoy's War & Peace and All Quiet on the Western Front.