Waiting for the World to End
Nicole Hunter
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 iUniverse
ISBN: 0595329179

A mystical bond links a man, woman & child, blurring the boundaries between right, wrong & faith in contemporary middle America.

Raised in upper-class Boston as the only child of two economists, Thomas Olsen grows up feeling like a perpetual outsider. Athletic & poetic, he eventually settles with more kindred spirits in suburban Indiana.

As a high school English department chairman & basketball coach, Olsen endears himself to the locals -- yet despite his popularity, he can't shake the loneliness that dogs him. After years of keeping a guilty silence around part of his past, his body & soul have learned to lead separate lives.

Then Olsen develops a father-son bond with Ben Wendling, his student & player, & falls in love with Ben's enigmatic married mother. With Mary & Ben, the missing pieces of Olsen's life somehow feel restored -- until a surreal accident changes the course of all their futures.

Waiting for the World to End is an intimate look into a man's inner life: about his “what might have beens” & his memories. Thomas Olsen is a man, almost paralyzed by his feelings, or lack thereof, who carries an open wound of regret about the abortion his fiancee & he agreed to, back when he was a young man.

Now, as he approaches his prime, with a basketball team that will go to the state finals, & a friendship with Ben, its star player, he meets Ben's mother, & his heart is suddenly opened up.

Waiting for the World to End is a cautionary tale about holding back, longing & fear of intimacy. It takes place over several years first in a small Indiana town, & later at a college in Arizona.

It is about a man who becomes devoted to a boy who is the son he never had. About gestures of friendships, moments of intensity that could portend intimacy, yet fade away from lack of passion. Because Olsen's passion is all tied up in Ben's life, & the woman he loves & cannot love.

Waiting for the World to End will make you think about what you did in your past & how you want to live your future. It will give you moments of sheer panic & joy, as well as frustration & satisfaction.

Like a long, glorious Midwest summer sunset, Waiting for the World to End is filled with melancholy, poetry, religious connections, youthful exuberance & the beating of the heart of a man who has never quite got the hang of this thing called Love.

This is Nicole Hunter's debut novel, & it is a worthy read.
(01/02/05)

Rebecca