Jason Mott lives in southeastern North Carolina. He has a BFA in Fiction and an MFA in Poetry, both from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His poetry and fiction has appeared in various literary journals. He was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize award and Entertainment Weekly listed him as one of their 10 “New Hollywood: Next Wave” people to watch. He is the author of two poetry collections: We Call This Thing Between Us Love and “…hide behind me…” The Returned is his first novel. The Returned has also been optioned by Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B, in association with Brillstein Entertainment and ABC. It will air in March, 2014 on the ABC network under the title “Resurrection.”
The Returned by Jason Mott
The Returned, by Jason Mott, is a solid enough novel, capably told for the most part, but which nonetheless left me feeling unsatisfied in that it seemed like it just didn't quite meet up with its full potential. The premise is pretty simple to sum up: one day the dead start returning, seemingly wholly alive (this is not a zombie novel). While this obviously will have major societal and global ramifications, The Returned is almost exclusively focused on the much more personal impact this mystifying event has on a small town and a handful of people. Its major focus, in fact, is on a single family: Harold and Lucille and their son Jacob, whom they lost years ago at the age of eight. Now he has returned, the same age, though his parents are decades older. In between the chapters relating to events in the town, we get glimpses at other Returned elsewhere in the world.
The family dynamic, and ... Read More
