"To be nobody but yourself in a world that's doing its best to make you someone else, is to fight the hardest battle you are ever going to fight. Never stop fighting."
The above quote makes me think of the protagonist in Mike Unger's first novel Inches from America; that was launched on November 14 in the atrium of McNally Robinson at Grant Park Shopping Centre.
Markus Dumont is the name of the protagonist character in the novel. Mike is a dual citizen from Canada who is living in Minnesota. He has just lost his girlfriend to a religous fanatic this only fuels the fire to his already burning hatred for religion and politics. The story take place during 9/11 and Markus feels nothing when he sees the Twin Towers being destroyed. He had lost the fight to care.
Andrew Unger a high school teacher from Steinbach speaks to the intimate crowd in the atrium at McNally Robinson. He stands at the podium like a champ, he won his fight, his struggle to get his first book published; a work that had been in progress since 2003.
Unger gives us highlights of the book and reads us passages and pages as the crowd listens intently. He intrigues us by letting us know that his protagonist character Markus Dumont gives up his fight and commits suicide which is what made me think of the quote I started my blog with. Markus tried to make his suicide look as though he was murdered by his ex-girlfriends new love interest; the religous nut.
The rest of the novel is told from the perspective of a dead Markus as he is stuck in purgatory. This is interesting because even as we live and breathe, if we stop fighting for what we are passionate about, what is right, what makes us tick, then we too are living in purgatory.
From what I have read and heard from Andrew Unger I reccommend this to be an interesting darker read from the anti- American perspective of a dead man. I plan to continue reading it myself and will be sure to update my blog again when I do.
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