Richard Brautigan is, without a doubt, one of my all-time favorite authors.

Just like all his other novels, this one is a short read. However, if you truly take the time to savor the prose, it offers an abundance of depth and meaning.

This book delves into the topic of death, exploring musings on death and the consequences that follow. The fact that Brautigan himself committed suicide not long after adds an entirely new and distinct perspective.

I believe this to be his most raw and darkest work. Nevertheless, the narration of the little things in life maintains a light and breezy quality, in true Brautigan fashion.

Overall, I would rate this book a 10/10 and would highly recommend it for re-reading. It's a thought-provoking and beautifully written piece that leaves a lasting impression.

This book offers an in-depth exploration into the meanderings of an American man.

After the death of a female friend, he embarks on a journey across the country.

His thoughts and emotions are laid bare as he traverses different landscapes and encounters various people.

The author skillfully captures the essence of his protagonist's inner turmoil and the search for meaning in the face of loss.

Through vivid descriptions and engaging storytelling, the reader is drawn into the man's world and experiences his highs and lows.

This book is not just a story of one man's travels but also a profound meditation on grief, friendship, and the human condition.

It will leave readers with a newfound appreciation for the power of storytelling and the importance of finding one's way in the wake of tragedy.

I initially read the author's biography. However, I forgot it. Then I read the book. After that, I read the biography again. I should have understood that the author was a suicidal person when reading it.

The book... I don't know. I don't think it was super. But the part that was about two or three pages long regarding women taking off their clothes before having sex appealed to me so much that since I borrowed the book from the library, I took a photo of those pages. Later, I will write it here to remember ((at one point.

I am a big fan of Brautigan, so I was extremely happy to discover that this book had been released a few years ago, albeit posthumously.

Brautigan's works have always held a special charm for me, with their unique blend of simplicity and depth. This particular book is no exception.

Although it is short and sweet, it manages to convey powerful emotions and ideas. The concise writing style allows the reader to quickly immerse themselves in the story and experience the essence of Brautigan's vision.

Each page is filled with vivid imagery and thought-provoking concepts that linger in the mind long after the book has been finished.

I am truly grateful to have had the opportunity to read this posthumous release and add it to my collection of Brautigan's works. It is a testament to his enduring talent and the lasting impact he has had on the literary world.

"If you were going on a flight to death, what clothes would you wear?" This is the question that comes to our minds after reading about an unfortunate woman. The book on the surface seems to be a man's travelogue, which is also by the author's pen. As he travels from Alaska to Hawaii, he writes things in cafes and on the streets. But how can one read such a death between the lines of the book and not think about dying?

Richard Brautigan, the author, starts his travelogue with death; the death of a familiar woman, in the same room where they used to sleep before. The first text of the book is a short letter to that woman that Brautigan still doesn't believe in his death and has a lot of unspoken words that he knows she will never read. A strange beginning for Richard's last book, which two years later he decided to fill himself with a gun and end it all on the farm and die forever.

The further we go in the book, the more he shows his calmness and restlessness. And when the hero returns home in the last chapters of the book and talks about his life in Montana, the same city where he spent the last moments of his life, the restlessness fades away and we know that it is difficult and pointless for him to continue anymore.

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A part of the review of the book "An Unfortunate Woman" which was published on the Avant-garde website by Elnaz Kazemi.

For the full text, please visit the link below:

https://avangard.ir/article/351

The book is structured as a semi-autobiographical journal.

It chronicles the travels of its narrator, who is closely modeled after Brautigan himself. Brautigan's narrative style reflects his characteristic wit, irony, and poetic prose.

The journey is not just geographical but also an introspective one. It is marked by digressions and reflections rather than a linear plot. The episodic nature of the entries, spanning from January to June 1982, captures the whimsy and randomness of life.

Yet they cover themes of mortality, depression, and solitude. Central to the book's thematic exploration is the shadow of death.

Brautigan's protagonist navigates through the aftermath of the suicide of a woman he knew, whose home he temporarily occupies, and the death of a friend from cancer. These events cast a melancholic tone over the narrative.

It mirrors Brautigan's own struggles with depression, alcoholism, and his contemplation of mortality. This personal connection makes the book an eerie foreshadowing of the author's own suicide in 1984.

Despite its dark themes, "An Unfortunate Woman" retains Brautigan's signature humor and irony. His ability to find the absurd in the mundane, like describing a chicken in Hawaii or a courtroom scene for forgetting when one last wrote, provides a counterbalance to the narrative's inherent sadness.

This juxtaposition of humor against despair showcases Brautigan's complex engagement with the human condition. The novel serves as a personal document, offering glimpses into Brautigan's life during his final years.

It's a raw, sometimes painful look at a man grappling with his identity, his past, and his imminent end. For Brautigan's fans, this book is a treasure, providing not just entertainment but a deeper understanding of the man behind the literary persona. His daughter, Ianthe Brautigan, found and later advocated for its publication, recognizing its value as a piece of her father's best work.

This, Brautigan's last book, is a profound study in pessimism.

The book's focus is firmly on death. It details the heart attack death of one friend, the tragic suicide of another, and the lingering and painful end of a woman dying of cancer, the unfortunate woman of the title.

It also follows Brautigan through the last year of his own life. There are several short discussions of suicide, but curiously, they are always about the suicides of others, not his own.

Of course, it is a tragic irony that he would take his own life shortly after writing this book. Brautigan had been a hero to many in the 1960s, and his masterpiece, Trout Fishing In America, is still widely regarded as one of the four or five true classics of that era.

Pessimism had always been a prominent feature of Brautigan's writing, but this final novel takes that pessimism to its darkest depths. It offers a haunting and poignant exploration of the human condition and the inevitability of death.

What an extremely odd, yet gently and purposefully self-involved book this is!

It is an oblique meditation on a house he resided in Berkeley where a woman had hanged herself. His own suicide just 2 years after penning it adds a truly haunting extra dimension to the whole narrative.

He successfully achieved his ambition of juxtaposing the present with the past. I especially relished his wickedly humorous take on the Midwest. It was fascinating to learn that barbed wire was invented in Illinois. Additionally, his aspiration of creating more distance between our problems as we grow older, thereby having more space to plant daffodils, is also truly great. It gives one a sense of hope and a new perspective on life's challenges as we age.

This book is not only a thought-provoking exploration of various themes but also a poignant reminder of the complexity of human existence and the power of words to convey deep emotions and ideas.

Well, it's actually three and a half. But as a friend puts it, “Even bad Brautigan is good.”

The novel is extremely scattered. At times, it reads more like a travelogue than a proper novel.

Things that are supposed to be significant—the woman who hanged herself and Ianthe, Brautigan’s somewhat estranged daughter—appear almost as afterthoughts.

There is no proper plot and no playful weaving of elements as there was in Willard or Sombrero Fallout.

However, there are occasional fine passages. I think I underlined about ten. (See my friend’s comment.)

The elements are present—Iphigenia, Ianthe, the hanged woman, Brautigan’s myriad sexual encounters—but the connecting thread is lacking.

It seems that Brautigan had all these interesting ingredients but failed to combine them into a coherent and engaging whole.

Perhaps this is part of his unique style, but for some readers, it may leave them feeling a bit unsatisfied.

Nonetheless, there are still those flashes of brilliance that make one wonder what could have been if he had managed to tie it all together more effectively.

Overall, it's a somewhat flawed but still somewhat captivating work.

This one almost made me shed a tear.

Perhaps it's just my life at the moment, with all its joys and sorrows, or the woman in my life at the moment, who brings both happiness and challenges.

Or maybe it's the traveling that encompasses my life at the moment, taking me to new places and exposing me to different cultures.

But this one truly hit home. It spoke to my heart and made me feel emotions I haven't felt in a long time.

Damn it Brautigan, you've done it again mate. Your words have the power to touch people's souls and make them see the world in a different light.

5/5 stars. This is a masterpiece that I will cherish for a long time.

I am truly at a loss to explain precisely why I had such an affinity for this book.

It is, in essence, a book that seems to be about nothing. There is mention of travel, yet the recounting of that travel holds no real meaning for anyone who might attempt to follow in the author's footsteps. The unfortunate woman makes only sporadic appearances, hanging there without any real context to give her presence significance.

The author endeavors to draw his calendar maps, but he hops about in a chaotic manner. I simply do not understand how this haphazard hopping can provide him with any sense of self-orientation.

However, I could identify with every single aspect of that chaos. The life that lacks a plan. The inability to move on from certain places or fully enjoy the sun in Maui. The helplessness that comes from listening to the fears and miseries of friends and yet being powerless to do anything.

I had the distinct feeling that it was my own mind's restlessness that the author was vividly painting. Caught up in the mundane, the unremarkable details about places and people. The person who constantly wonders if they have lived their life all wrong, yet also knows deep down that it is far too late to go back and change oneself.

What was once full of potential has now collapsed and solidified into an immovable mass.

There are ten writing lines left on this page and I have decided not to use the last line. I'll leave it to somebody else's life. I hope they will make better use of it than I would have. But I did try.

These are the profound last words of Richard Brautigan's writing. A little over 2 years later, he would tragically commit suicide and this book would remain a hidden secret until it was published in French in 1994, and then in English in 2000.

I have been a devoted Brautigan fan for nearly 10 years now. I have delved into his strange, non-sequitur ramblings, his surreal works of fiction, his quotidian poetry, and his complete disregard for formality, tone, and even at times, a consistent plot. And now, I have quite literally reached the end of his work. There is nothing more after this book.

What's truly sad is that, about halfway through, you realize this is essentially the beginning of his suicide note. He is ostensibly writing about a woman who committed suicide, but at times, the narrative clearly becomes about him. He was tired and feeling hopeless when he wrote this, and you can sense it. This is supposedly a work of fiction, but you really come to understand that this is Brautigan revealing his desire to die, through the lens of fiction. It is a deeply melancholy realization. The closer I got to the ending of this book, the more profound the sadness I felt.

He, although feeling hopeless and without direction, wants you to be amazed by all the places he traveled, because he himself is amazed he managed to do it. And it truly is amazing. A man who likely lived his life in delusion and squalor had such a rich and eventful existence, and yet, he managed to make it all sound so simple.

And what of this book? Its imagery is unmistakably Brautigan, his metaphors are elaborate, humorous, and relatable. His stream of consciousness method of prose is at its finest here. Whereas you or I as writers might pause and have a completely random thought while writing and disregard it, he incorporates it. It becomes an integral part of the story. Somehow, it all works.

This is by far one of his most memorable works, right up there with Trout Fishing and In Watermelon Sugar.