Tod Wodicka's All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well has been likened to A Confederacy of Dunces, and I can see why: a tragi-comic protagonist is out of place in time and culture. But I remember laughing Out Loud repeatedly every time I've read Confederacy, and this book was sad, sad, sad. Confederacy was Funny AND sad AND funny again.
This book has great writing, layering stories from 1105, the 1930s, the 1960s, and current time. Our guy, Bert Hecker, is into recreating medieval times, and not just during conventions. His mother-in-law came from a place that no longer exists, he is an orphan, and his kids feel homeless. Displacement is a major theme. And can you ever re-place yourself? And can relationships be repaired once they've gone really bad?
Here's an example of the beauty and sorrow of Wodicka's writing: "Our three haunted Great War veterans wanted to talk of the Great War and those they saw killed and those who survived the Great War only to be killed later by things like boundless despair."
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