American Boy (original 2011; edition 2011)

American Boy by Larry Watson is a unique and captivating story. It portrays a prominent family in a small Minnesota town in the early 1960's. Narrated by a high school aged boy, it touches on the ideals, observations and passions of the boy. The power of American Boy is more from how the same forces that help shape the life of a young man also affect the adults he knows and cares about. The characters are sometimes sketchy - almost caricatures - and this might lead the reader to wish they more fully developed. But the overall effect was one of exposing an emptiness on top of the overt drama -pleasing and slightly troubling. ( )

A nicely written book; a not totally compelling plot or characters. Teen age boy from poor family taken in by rich doctor family; becomes smitten with young woman the doctor operates on and then keeps on in his house; big blizzard and rather unlikely denouement. The characters just didn't seem quite fully developed, and the doctor's character didn't seem believable. But, as I said, quite well-written. ( )

Idyllic life in small-town middle-America in the 1960's--is this one of the most overdone genres in contemporary fiction? To me it feels as if authors are all too likely to want to relive--or misremember--the days of their youth. Believe me, they were never like this!

Matthew Garth doesn't have much family life. His father is gone and his mother works long hours to keep a roof over their heads. Thus Matthew is pretty much adopted by the family of his best friend, Johnny Dunbar. The Dunbars are the pillars of the community. Johnny's dad is the town's doctor, they live in the biggest house, and are the most admired family. The author paints the time (early 1960s) and place (northern Minnesota, almost on the Canadian border) beautifully, with only an occasional misstep. The reader can feel the biting cold of the winter as the wind comes howling across the plains to chill the lives of all the residents of Willow Falls. On Thanksgiving Day, as the Dunbar family, including Matthew, sit down for their holiday meal. The phone rings, and slowly, inexorably, the life of each person in the room begins to change.

Dr. Dunbar is called to join in the search for a young woman, purportedly shot by her boyfriend, and running injured through the blustery afternoon. Matt and Johnny are eager to be a party to the excitement, so they go to the shack where the girl, Louisa Lindahl, lived with her ne'er-do-well boyfriend. By the time the boys have returned to the Dunbar home, she has already been found, and is under the doctor's care in his home office.

The boys, Matthew, especially, are immediately smitten. Dr. Dunbar decides that since she has no place to go, Louisa should convalesce in the family home. Mrs. Dunbar, as usual, has nothing to say in the matter. So Louisa continues to insinuate herself into the lives of the Dunbars.

There is more--all standard fare in this type of coming of age story--drag racing, drinking, sexual experimentation, finishing with a wild and wooly drive through a terrible blizzard. Watson's writing is fine--he certainly paints vivid descriptions of life in a small town which is built around one family. Probably no one could create a more visceral blizzard than he does. His characters, however, are lacking in humanity. They are so flat and unlikable, that it made reading about them a chore. Even Matt is overcome by his baser instincts, and in the end, not anyone you would want to meet.

Other readers have been most enthusiastic about this title. I regret that I cannot be among them. ( )

Larry Watson's AMERICAN BOY is an all-American, universal kind of story that will resonate with anyone who grew up in the American heartland of the 50s and 60s. The typical small town of those decades is portrayed perfectly - those downtown blocks that held hardware and grocery stores with the local lawyer and doctor upstairs over the drugstore. Even the latest Plymouth-Dodge innovation, that infamous and short-lived push-button transmission, is featured, the same one that was immortalized in songwriter Greg Brown's "Brand New '64 Dodge."

Matthew Garth is our unlikely hero, a fatherless 16-17 year-old in the 1962-63 school year, who has attached himself for the past several years to the Dunbars, a prominent family in Willow Falls, Minnesota, a small community of a couple thousand. Johnny Dunbar is his classmate and closest friend, but all that will change when an "older woman" enters the picture in the person of Louisa Lindahl. The head of the family, Dr. Dunbar, is a pillar of the local community, although there are early intimations of that pillar being made of salt, with feet of clay.

Like many small towns, Willow Falls is a study in contrasts and opposites. The falls is not really a falls; Frenchman's Forest is not really a forest, but a dark and secret place where the two then-younger boys first learned about the mechanics of sex from an ill-informed older boy, and which later serves as backdrop to more intimate experimentation. Because one of the things that makes AMERICAN BOY such a universal tale is its minutely descriptive attention to all those familiar rites of passage - smoking, drinking, reckless driving, and of course backseat groping with all the heavy breathing, passionate kisses, frenzied frustrations and furtive fumbling with zippers, clasps, breasts and thighs. There is even a very "Mrs Robinson" scene between Matthew and the local lawyer's wife, but it has its own variations making it both original and derivative all at the same time.

Matthew becomes obsessed with the not-so mysterious twenty-something Lydia, who, through a sequence of shocking events, takes up residence with the Dunbars, destroying and changing not just Matthew's friendship with Johnny, but the whole family dynamic.

Yes, this is a masterfully rendered story of a friendship and family torn assunder and innocence lost. An old tale to be sure, but Watson makes it all seem new and fresh, employing characters all too human and flawed.

As a coming-of-age story, countless comparisons could probably be made. I've already suggested THE GRADUATE, but the ones I first thought of were Evan Hunter's LAST SUMMER and Herman Raucher's SUMMER OF '42, both books from 30-40 years ago, and, more recently, Donald Lystra's northern Michigan story, SEASON OF WATER AND ICE.

AMERICAN BOY is, in the end, an old tale made new and fresh through the story-telling skills of a master hand at fiction. Larry Watson burst onto the book scene nearly twenty years ago with his first novel, MONTANA 1948, a shocking and beautiful book. His latest offering shows he is still at the top of his game. If you appreciate serious literary fiction, READ THIS BOOK! ( )

It’s 1962 in rural Minnesota, near the South Dakota border, and seventeen year old Matt Garth is practically a second son in the family of his best friend, Johnny Dunbar. Johnny’s father is the local doctor and when a young woman is shot by her boyfriend on Thanksgiving Day, she is treated by the doctor and recovers in the Dunbar’s home. Unfortunately, the young woman, Louisa, has more than recovery in mind.

The story is told in the first person perspective of Matt as he looks back on this wind and snow swept winter of his youth. And, probably due to this limited perspective, the women in the story never seem to develop into fully realized characters. Mrs Dunbar’s passivity was a puzzle to me. Why Louisa herself was never taken to the hospital was also a question in the back of my mind. Perhaps it was just the way life was in this father, or in this case, doctor, knows best era. But these are really minor quibbles and the writing rises above them.

Watson, author of the stunning Montana, 1948, is a lyrical storyteller and American Boy is a poignant coming of age tale well worth a read. ( )