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Loading... American Rust (original 2009; edition 2013)by Philipp Meyer (Author)
Work InformationAmerican Rust by Philipp Meyer (2009)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Oh, what do I want to say. I was skeptical at first, another american boy's bildungsroman. But there are moments of beauty and insight and realness in the internal monologues; great moments of commentary - oh I hate the phrase social commentary - maybe more a questioning of society and history and capitalism that makes it more relevant than the stories it occasionally calls back to. The Rust Belt deserves many stories exploring its depth, and this is one of them. ( ) Steel plants have closed, and jobs lost in the Monongahela Valley, Pennsylvania, where this novel takes place. Poverty, violence, drugs, boredom, and desperation are prevalent. Former steel plant structures stand abandoned in the overgrowth. Two unlikely friends, Isaac (the smart but awkward kid) and Billy (the football jock) have stayed in their small town after graduation, missing their chance to go to college. Isaac has been taking care of his invalid father after his mother’s suicide. His sister has already escaped to college and marriage. He decides to leave and asks Billy to come with him. They approach an abandoned building, where a man will be killed, and their lives forever altered. It is a story of staying vs. leaving, fear vs. bravery, selfishness vs. altruism. The writing style took me a bit of time to assimilate. It is quasi-stream-of-consciousness, as if the reader is in the head of six characters, thinking along with them, which proves to be a very effective method of characterization. Each character sees a portion of the greater story from a personal perspective, none having access to the entire picture. In addition to Isaac and Billy, the story is told from the perspectives of Grace (Billy’s mother), Henry (Isaac’s father), Lee (Isaac’s sister), and Harris (the chief of police of their town who has been involved with Grace). The novel is more character-driven than plot-driven, but there is a plot, and the tension is built through this limited perspective of each character, gradually revealing to the reader what has happened. I thought it was a brilliant way to tell this story. These are flawed but decent people, often making poor decisions and facing the fallout. They are confronted with moral dilemmas and must choose their actions when the stakes are high. This book explores the questions of what lengths a person will go to protect a friend or loved one, and whether a person should save oneself or someone else at the risk of personal safety. It touches on questions of personal dignity, inner strength, and integrity. How much are an individual’s actions are driven by social, mental, or physical fear, and should they be? I questioned a couple of plot points, but in the end, I became so invested in these characters that it didn’t matter. The ending is not tidied up and is left for the reader to imagine but offers hope for the characters of the story and, more importantly, for humankind. This book is the author’s debut and I look forward to reading more of his work. Highly recommended. This book is rough. It's beautifully written and interesting, but the story is very bleak. The characters are complicated and so real that they could be people you know. The story is familiar and heartbreaking and frustrating and sometimes infuriating. I loved the way the author unfolded each character's story slowly, revealing new details about their lives in such a skilled way that you were constantly changing your mind about each person. The characters are flawed but honest, at least with themselves, even if it's too late to change things when they finally tell the truth. Sometimes they don't even understand their own feelings. The book was hard to read at times, but it was worth the effort. I really enjoyed it even as I despaired.
Do people still think in terms of the Great American Novel – a work of fiction that exactly captures the contemporary spirit of the union? If so, American Rust has GAN stamped all over it. In racing terms it’s by Of Mice and Men, out of Huckleberry Finn, ridden by Cormac McCarthy, and trained by Salinger and Kerouac. [T]he plot is captivating without ever straying into the realm of folksy page-turner. The political message may be obvious - "We're treading backwards as a nation, probably for the first time in history," Bud's boss tells him - but it's a compelling one none the less. There are awkward moments in this novel […] but these are fleeting lapses, steamrollered by Mr. Meyer’s instinctive storytelling powers and his ability to create characters who evolve from familiar types into flesh-and-blood human beings. “American Rust” announces the arrival of a gifted new writer — a writer who understands how place and personality and circumstance can converge to create the perfect storm of tragedy. Meyer's tone is less polemic than John Steinbeck's, but he's working on the same broad scale, using the struggles of a few desperate people to portray the tragedy of life in a place that offers no employment, no chance for improvement. This novel is in desperate need of an exceptional editor rather than a myth. Amidst all that rust, there’s a good story, a few good characters, and it’s the first book that I’ve read in a long while that deserves to have American in its title; Meyer’s take on what it means to be an average Joe-the-Plumber-American holds promise for his literary future. But a lot of what’s good about American Rust manages to get lost in a bog of unimaginative prose, stereotyped characters and dead-ended subplots. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, a lush landscape as deceptively promising as the edifices of the abandoned steel mills, "American Rust" is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation that arises in its absence. Left alone to care for his aging father after his mother commits suicide and his sister escapes to Yale, Isaac English longs for a life beyond his hometown. But when he finally sets out to leave for good, accompanied by his temperamental best friend, former high school football star Billy Poe, they are caught up in a terrible act of violence that changes their lives forever. No library descriptions found. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumPhilipp Meyer's book American Rust was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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