Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Mink River (2010)by Brian Doyle
Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. no reviews | add a review
Awards
Fiction.
Literature.
In a small fictional town on the Oregon coast there are love affairs and almost-love-affairs, mystery and hilarity, bears and tears, brawls and boats, a garrulous logger and a silent doctor, rain and pain, Irish immigrants and Salish stories, mud and laughter. There's a Department of Public Works that gives haircuts and counts insects, a policeman who is addicted to Puccini, a philosophizing crow, beer, and berries. An expedition is mounted, a crime is committed, and there's an unbelievably huge picnic on the football field. Babies are born. A car is cut in half with a saw. A river confesses what it's thinking . . . This is the tale of a town, written in a distinct and lyrical voice, and when the book ends, listeners will be more than a little sad to leave the village of Neawanaka, on the wet coast of Oregon, beneath the hills that used to boast the biggest trees in the history of the world. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
The prose had some magnificent moments. Most of the characters were at least interesting. I enjoyed the bits of Native American and Irish oral histories. The maical realism was lovely. The town certainly came to life... But... BUT.
There just feels like a huge BUT hanging in air there. I was not invested in enough of the characters. Some, yes. Worried Man and Cedar - absolutely - but none of the traumas or joys experienced by the characters in this affected me in the least (with the exception of a depression of one character which was beautifully described).
And I think that the overwhelming Catholicism of it just put me off by a LOT. I am not a religious person and I would go so far as to say that I can border on antireligious especially with regard to organized religion in general and Christianity in particular. Regardless, I can read books that have a religious/morality based undercurrent and not dislike them. This felt super preachy to me, though (especially with the Inch that goes out to sea).
I don't know. I'd like to give it 3.5 stars if I could. But I can't. And because I save my 4 and 5 Stars for things that really knock my socks off, I have to stick with 3 on this one.
That said, I did send 3 quotes to myself from the book - so it had plenty to offer... Like this: ( )