I am not one that immediately reaches for the American Western story, whether it be in book or celluloid. I've been proven wrong time and again for shying away from genres that I associate with traditional masculine perspectives, though. I do love those Game of Thrones books, I do like Cormac McCarthy. And yet when I opened the decidedly Western-feeling In the Distance, I was not at all prepared for what awaited me.

This is not Western adventure; In the Distance is a meditation on loneliness and solitude in the form of a journey. First, we meet Håkan, our protagonist, (our dear Håkan!) as an old, towering Swede emerging from a hole in a frozen-over sea. And then he begins to tell his life's tale, one that found him on opposite sides of the country from his brother when he was just a boy, over a century ago, and we travel with him, and see him learn, and love, and lose—truly staggering losses, felt keenly by the reader.

There is something dazzling about Diaz's sentences and how he beautifully renders the plot from Håkan's perspective. He reveals the horror and ugliness of humanity, but still makes a quiet hero of Håkan. I want to include a quote here of a paragraph that I read perhaps ten times, but to do so would be depriving you from encountering it on your own. It's a remarkable, tightly-written pivotal moment that is at once violent, action-filled, and yet the reader remains mesmerized in the mind of Håkan. The bond that Diaz creates between reader and protagonist is rare; especially for me, in a man.

I read this two months ago, but I haven't forgotten my love for this beautiful, heartbreaking book. Picking it up just now to write this, I nearly dove back in to read it all over again. And I know I will revisit Håkan someday, and glory in Diaz's writing once more.