The Milagro Beanfield War is reminiscent of a Russian-style epic - set in New Mexico. Nichols clearly has a sense for the character of the Southwest. But a book about everyday existence must allow that existence to transcend mundaneness, and Nichols too often instead uses characters as punching bags for his humor - with a few exceptions, whose strength makes their absence in the rest of the book felt all the more strongly. ( )

After reading Killing for Coal last month about how the coal barons built a Western economy on the backs of poor miners, I needed an antidote. The Milagro Beanfield War, sitting on my bedside shelf for well over 20 years now, was just the thing. This funny, compassionate novel was just as good this time, and maybe better because I understand it more after 20 years of additional experience in the world, as it was the first time I read it. Certainly one of the classics, and on my personal Top Ten of All Time list. ( )

Excellent book. Characters are very well developed and many small plots keep it very interesting. ( )

Although I can't honestly classify this as a great piece of literature, it is one of my special, will cherish forever, books. It tells the story of Joe Mondragon, a poor handyman and semi-scoundrel living in a small village in northern New Mexico. To feed his family, he irrigates his bean field illegally from a nearby canal. The resulting uproar involves most of the town, including the wealthy landowers, the sheriff, a well-meaning but inept Peace Corp volunteer and a ghost.

The first time I tried to read it, I put it down after only a few pages, because it began slowly, introducing the readers to the town and the main characters. When I picked it back up, I fell in love with it.

I have also read three other books by Nichols: the other two titles in his New Mexico Trilogy and American Blood. Each book gets a little darker and morbid. American Blood was tough to get through. ( )

About ten times the story of the Redford movie. A wonderful and often whimsical tale of a small Hispanic town in the New Mexico mountains in which folks struggle to stay alive and keep their town alive as well. ( )

Both better and worse than the film, but on balance the worse wins out.

It's better in tone: the film is a feel-good family drama/comedy with a happy ending, the book has more dirt and alcoholism and stupidity. The Coyote Angel of the novel deserves the name ("a half-toothless, one-eyed bum sort of coyote dressed in tattered blue jeans and sandals, and sporting a pair of drab motheaten wings [...] [T]he angel, startled by Amarante's voice, froze stiff with its ears lying back flat; and then, realizing there was no immediate danger, it turned [...]"), while the film's version is just tricksy.

The same dusty, worn, and shabby sensibility underpins the story as well. Of course there is space for much more story in a novel of 630 pages than a movie of 117 minutes, and many of the extra glimpses of Milagro that we get have a nasty edge to them. The backstory on the characters that made it into the movie gives them more depth as well, although many of the characters feel more like multi-stereotypes than real well-rounded individuals: several flat dimensions glued awkwardly together to give a semblance of depth, as in "Horsethief Shorty's a real tough wiseguy, I bet you didn't expect him to have a purely platonic and tender love affair, now, did you?".

(In one case, the film's character even manages to completely outshine the book's. Christopher Walkin's Agent Kyril Montana is a different, though related, character to the one Nichols wrote, and the original couldn't drive out the newcomer in my mind.)

Where the film shines is in the sheer beauty of so many of the shots (the Coyote Angel, despite his relative good health; the senile brigade on the back of the truck; Amarante on the bulldozer), and where the book fails is in the writing. The following example took me less than ten minutes to find by random page-flicking:

Bernabé cleared his throat once while ambling nochalantly onto the front porch. There his eyes met his own pickup, and he was staring at this vehicle feeling uncomfortable, though unable to ascertain the reason for his disquiet, when Bruno Martinez sauntered out the front door and articulated the reason for Bernabé's discomfort[.]

Wordy, clumsy, and packed with irrelevant detail; it's not by any means all this bad (or I wouldn't have made it through) but this is fairly representative.

My advice, though it pains me to give it: watch the movie with the kids and skip the book. ( )

The author's voice does have a spoken quality to it, with frequent use of indirect dialogue and ruminance that is often very funny and, in a few places, very touching.

Read the rest of my review of The Milagro Beanfield War on my blog, The Nerd is the Word.

http://nerdword.blogspot.com/2006/01/... ( )