Castle Freeman

A very perceptive LT friend introduced me to Freeman over a decade ago, and although I stocked up on his titles, I only read one collection of his short stories. I loved that, so why has this one and another short novel remained tucked away all this time? I cannot say. But I am thrilled to have pulled it out yesterday and I blazed through it. As in Round Mountain, the main character here is a Vermont Sheriff, as he says, of a county comprised of "seventeen towns with no people". He never show more carries a sidearm, doesn't drive the county's cruiser around most of the time, and doesn't wear a uniform. He views his job as more social work than law enforcement, and he keeps getting re-elected without opposition. You gotta love him. But is he up to the job when the local perennial "bad boy" gets tangled up with some very dangerous Russian mob characters? His deputy doesn't think so---he thinks the "old guy" has had his day, and more modern techniques are called for. He is downright disrespectful, and probably is ignoring more orders than he follows. There's plenty of wit and humor here, plenty of common sense overcoming high-falutin' ideas, but don't mistake Sheriff Wing for Andy Taylor. He knows there comes a time when the "last resort" may have to be called upon. show less

Recently I came across [All That I Have] and loved it, so I scurried to find another of [[Castle Freeman]]'s novels. Then I waited, afraid I wouldn't love it as much as the first.
But this one is even better. I am in awe, actually. Everything about the novel is so right, all the ingredients I love, including strangers riding around in a car together all day: the structure, the characters, the theme, the dialogue, the SETTING! Are all rural places the same? Well, they share commonalities, for show more sure, but Freeman knows Vermont. Really knows. There's a reason this state is still underpopulated, besides it being winter 7 months of the year, it is beautiful, but great swathes are not suitable for anything but admiring from afar. Even logging in those forests is treacherous and hard. That came across in [All That I Have] too. There is nothing cute and cuddly about this version of Vermont either. There is beauty, there is community, there is humor aplenty and there is danger and suspense. All in 155 pages. A young woman comes to the sheriff (retired in [All That I Have] wanting him to do something about a man who is stalking her, Blackway. Well, Blackway is the local villain, disliked and feared, but . . . well . . . Blackway, so you leave him alone, stay out of his way. The sheriff tells her to go look for this fella, Scotty Cavanaugh at the old chair factory. She does that and finds two knights, one old and one young, in tarnished, no, in NO armor but cunning and muscle to help her. They will find Blackway and they will take care of him. At the chair factory a greek chorus of older men spend the day chatting, playing cards, musing, and . . . there are delicious hints of divine (or semi-divine) intervention. And even some romantical nudging of two young people who just might suit.

Describing a man at one of those off in the middle of nowhere country bars that is only for drinking and fighting: "He was a big one, all right: six and a half feet and in no way skinny, with a long tangled beard that hung from his chin to his chest. The beard was black at the sides and gray down the middle and made the man look like he was in the act of eating a skunk headfirst."

Humor: "[The Fort] was not the kind of bar where you stopped for a drink on your way home from work. It was the kind of bar where you stopped for many drinks on your way to work, until soon enough they fired you and you could spend your whole day at the Fort."

A total joy. ***** show less

I absolutely loved Freeman's book of linked stories, Round Mountain, which I read a few years ago. I immediately acquired Go with Me but for some unfathomable reason I left it languishing on shelf. I finally read it and it did not disappoint. This is a cool mix of Cormac McCarthy and Daniel Woodrell, with dialogue worthy of Elmore Leonard at his best. Lean, mean and starkly funny at times. At 170 pages, it will be over before you know it and you will be aching for more.

Okay, so, yeah, I'm likely biased as the book is set in Vermont, but, hey! I've disliked many a book set in Veremont. But Freeman gets Vermont. Someone asked me the other day why anyone at all lives here (or , I suppose places like North Dakota). I don't know why anyone would live in North Dakota, but I know I live here because I like the attitude that, so far has continued to prevail despite pressures. That is an unlikely mix of respect for the individual and a reliance on community. Not show more logical, definitely not quite rational, this attitude could even be described as inconsistebnt, contradictory or paradoxical. So here we have the county sheriff, Lucian Wing, a man trained in the old school style, that in a small community where you really know everyone you take each person as they come. If something is not as it should be you don't slam the law down, you wait to see what develops, and if you stretch the law here and there in order to give a rambunctious youth a second (or third) chance, well, it ain't broke, merely stretched. State police enforce law, sheriffs, according to Wing, have a different mandate. When people come in (in this case Russian criminals stowing money in real estate) who don't respect the locals or the local ways, when their mansion is robbed and they are angry, and you all know who did it, you wait them out too, coldly and determinedly, and like a coyote (we have lots of them), you outwit them, even surprise them into respecting you. Anyway it's a great story, well told. ***** show less