Isaac English and Billy Poe are sons of Buell, an increasingly destitute mill town in the Monongahela Valley of western Pennsylvania. As disparate as brain and jock can be, they are, amazingly, best friends. Isaac wants out of the dying steel belt so badly that he steals his father’s $4000 emergency fund. Poe, in love with the beauty of the rolling hills and river bottoms reverting from manufacturing powerhouse to wilderness, is trying to scrape out a living so he can stay. On what begins as a last walk to the rail yard, the young men encounter a group of bums. Before the day is over, one of the homeless men in dead. The rest of the novel explores the consequences of an act of violence born out of friendship.
Much in Meyer’s debut novel, as in life, defies appearances and expectations. Chapters, written in the distinctive voices of the characters -- the boys, Poe’s mother Grace, Isaac’s sister Lee, and the town police chief Bud Harris -- reveal glimpses of their personalities, family histories, and underlying motivations. The story also paints a dreary landscape of the social realities and prospects of post-industrial America. Throughout, it is a compelling, atmospheric journey of the dogged hope, abiding friendship, unspoken love, family loyalty, terrible mistakes, and personal sacrifice which emerge when the American dream goes bust. ( )

Although the pace was a little slow in the beginning, the tension soon escalated and I was hooked. The characters were exceptionally well-developed. An excellent read. I look forward to this author's next work. ( )

"He would not shoot a coyote. They were noble animals is why. They had a will -- they made other animals take them into consideration. Mountain lions, wolves, it was all the same. You could not kill an animal like that unless you were very sure of your motives."

"American Rust" is to what's left of 21st Century steel towns what American Beauty was to upper middle-class suburbia. A crushingly sad novel about a decaying and dying community in Western Pennsylvania. Not a single character exhibits a modicum of the nobility Sheriff Harris ascribes to the coyotes that have migrated into the hills near his home.

Henry English, widower of a suicide and crippled by a workplace accident idolizes his daughter for her intelligence and her acceptance to Yale and Harvard but loathes his son Isaac who may be more brilliant than his sister Lee.

Yet Isaac refuses to leave his father's side seeking some form of approval that will never come at the cost of all opportunities for college and leaving his desolate hometown. And when Isaac does decide to escape, he robs his father of savings to run away to Berkeley by riding the rails like a depression era hobo. College admissions offices do love larceny in their students, so good plan on Isaac's part.

[SPOILER OF OPENING CHAPTER] Isaac's initial attempt to leave town sets a tragic and pathetic course of events into motion by convincing Billy Poe to come along to an abandoned warehouse the night before he would hop the rails on his misguided faux-romantic trip west. Poe is a bored man-child seething with strength and violence. A former home town football hero who squandered his own opportunities to go to college and escape Buell, his best days are behind him. Unable to walk away from a confrontation with squatters, Poe nearly gets killed and, ironically, it is the scrawny Isaac who kills one of the hobos.

Even Lee the girl who "got away" to Yale and Harvard Law School is trapped by the gravity of Buell coming back to care for her father only to find that her brother will need a lawyer to help him avoid homicide charges. Lee's marriage to Simon is a loveless one to an idle, rich boy buried in his own depression and engaged in juvenile yet dangerous alcohol-soaked antics with an entourage of hangers-on. His friendships mirror the friendship between Isaac and Poe.

If life is the struggle of Sisyphus, pushing a boulder endlessly up a hill, "American Rust" is a novel about what happens when your foot slips in the dirt and the boulder comes rolling down and over you. It's a powerful and affecting read UNTIL the all too pat and sudden ending. Worth the read but first-time novelist Philipp Meyer ties up all the plot threads in the last 20 or so pages. No one is particularly happy with how he or she comes out at the end, but it just didn't feel as if the inevitable dooms headed their way actually destroyed any of them.

3/5 stars. Well-written but blows it in the end. ( )

This book is a Steinbeckian story of the slow decline of life in the Rust Belt. It is completely evocative, and absolutely puts you on the spot - vivid descriptions of the countryside reclaiming the outskirts of town, abandoned factories, etc.

Everyone in Buell is stuck in a rut of some sort, often of their own devising, with either no options at all or only very limited and phyrric options.

Good story, well-written, well-rounded characters. But this book depressed the life out of me. ( )

Philipp Meyer deserves praise for his debut novel, American Rust. The writing is excellent – evocative of Dreiser, Farrell, and other masters of American realism to whom he has been compared.

Also, Meyer accomplishes at least two of his goals. For one, he captures the blighted spirit of the depressed rust belt town of Buell and its desolate citizenry. Isaac English is a 20-year-old genius who gave up college plans to care for his wheelchair-bound father, crippled in a steel mill explosion shortly before Isaac’s mother killed herself. A violent altercation with three homeless men pulls Isaac, his best friend Billy Poe, and their families into the grinding gears of desperate circumstances.

For another, he creates definite voices for each of the six main characters who present the story from their own points of view. Dividing narrative duty among multiple characters is tricky. So often, especially with a new author, the voices become muddied and the personalities intermingled. Meyer’s characters maintain their individuality throughout.

But there are two fundamental flaws in American Rust. First, Meyer only partially succeeds in keeping the story in the fascinating gray area of moral ambiguity. He gets credit for tackling the big question of when a homicide might be morally justified. There are only a few ways to handle this theme:

* There is the traditional Crime and Punishment method found in Dostoevsky’s classic – and in American classics like Native Son and An American Tragedy – where a crime is certainly committed and justice, while not speedy in any of those examples, is certain.

* Then there is the justifiable homicide – self defense or rescue – that wraps up so many mysteries and adventure novels, but is not particularly interesting for launching a story.

* And, finally, there is the most interesting method, which is to make the killing morally ambiguous. Was it justified? Was it an accident? Or was it a crime? For example, Annie Proulx sticks to this fertile middle ground in her fascinating first novel, Postcards.

Meyer’s problem lies in reaching and then staying in this middle ground of moral ambiguity. The “crime” as committed appears patently justifiable. Meyer pulls his punches when it comes to making his two young heroes possibly bad people, so it is not the killing itself that is morally questionable. Instead, it is the boys’ subsequent cover up and other poor decisions that get them into a legal bind and moral morass. This extra step in reaching the moral gray area distracts from the story.

But it is the ending that is jarringly disappointing. After struggling to drag the story into the moral middle ground, Meyer pulls it way over the line into cold-blooded criminal territory for the finale. This “crime pays” (at least in the short run) ending feels like a cop out after watching the characters grappling with moral conundrums for most of the book.

Which leads to the second major problem, which is that all six of the main characters are martyrs. Each and every one of these people is willing to give up education, careers, and personal happiness; stay in an unhappy marriage, leave a happy marriage, or forgo marriage altogether; risk injury or death; injure others; and even kill others or themselves – all for their son or brother or father or lover. None are motivated by anything but the desire to sacrifice themselves for a loved one. Self interest, or even self preservation, does not come into play. Moral codes and legal systems do not affect decisions. While each character speaks with an individual voice, they are all motivated by the same, one-dimensional force. But while one martyr might be sympathetic, an entire cast of martyrs is tedious.

Because of these cracks in its foundation, American Rust is not the next Great American Novel. But Meyer is definitely an up-and-comer.

Also posted on Rose City Reader. ( )