Recovering Maurice by Martin Zelder: A powerful insight into loss and starting again

In a world filled with complexities of human emotions and relationships, “Recovering Maurice” by Martin Zelder offers a poignant exploration of trauma and redemption. Through the eyes of the beleaguered professor Maurice, readers are invited to journey alongside a character who grapples with deep-seated pain and the intricacies of personal growth.

Spoiler-free Plot

Recovering Maurice follows rumpled sixtyish professor Maurice, who believes he has a good life —wife, home, job— until a chance encounter with a mysterious woman reading a book about trauma. From that moment, Maurice begins to examine the trauma that has shaped his life —his brother Emil’s devastating childhood neurological damage, his own developmental struggles, his professional and personal failings, and even his lifelong frustration with people’s persistent mispronunciation of his surname, Obster (with a long o).

As Maurice delves deeper, new ventures like a book club at a dive bar end in disaster, and the perils of betrayal, mortality, and despair grow ever closer.

When Emil’s death leaves Maurice reeling, he is left to confront not only these new traumas but the foundation for his own recovery. In a quest that includes love, faith, nature, and community, Maurice embarks on a vulnerable journey of self-discovery.

Recovering Maurice is a moving and precarious tale about disabilities—both visible and invisible—humor amidst frailty, and a person’s often fitful search for healing in a world full of challenges.

My take on Recovering Maurice

There is a common phrase in modern literary discourse, which is that you have to create a relatable protagonist. With this, a lot of people mean to create a protagonist whose struggles, personality, and even motivations are something that we understand. And then there is the case of Maurice, Martin Zelder’s main character in this book, who is and isn’t relatable at the same time.

A lot of the struggles that Maurice goes through, such as his brother’s illness and even something as minor as the way his last name is pronounced, are not universal, even if some of us have gone through them. However, the general feeling of struggle, of loss and pain, is something that we can all relate to and that is part of the charm of the book.

Recovering Maurice is an interesting story because you begin to wonder how much the protagonist can take. In many ways, it is similar to Kentaro Miura’s legendary manga, Berserk, in the sense that the focus is on how the protagonist can deal with so much hardship and keep moving forward. Zelder goes to great lengths to challenge Maurice, but that is also part of the charm of the book since it gives greater insight into his mentality and what drives him.

Furthermore, elements such as Emil’s steady decline can serve as a haunting yet poignant examination of slow loss and what this can do to all the family members involved. It is a story that doesn’t hold its punches and can definitely be a tough read if you manage to connect with the characters, but this is also part of its charm.

If there is a major issue with the story, albeit one that can be easily understood, it is the fact that Zelder tends to be very direct with the things he wants to convey. By this, I mean that he is going to tell the reader what the character thinks, likes, or dislikes, and feels, without leaving anything to the imagination and allowing his storytelling to do the talking. It is the typical case of “Show, don’t tell” that is often mentioned, and while it doesn’t break the story in any meaningful way, it is a small gripe that needs to be highlighted.

On the other hand, clocking in at about 260 pages or so, the book can be a fairly quick read. This is good in the sense that there isn’t a lot of fluff that can distract the reader from the main plot, and also makes it easier to digest in a few days if you are into the story. A lot of new writers tend to add a lot of stuff in terms of details, but Zelder tends to be quite straightforward, which works with this type of story.

All in all, Recovering Maurice is a story with a lot of heart. It is a journey of self-discovery, as the summary says, but it is also a story about overcoming the odds and dealing with loss and trauma. There is a very powerful message here and, above all else, a very good story.

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