Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Mitten lit

Yesterday on NPR, Jennifer Wilson gave a shout-out to two Michigan novels. Charles Baxter's Saul and Patsy chronicles the marriage of the title characters in the fictional small town of Five-Oaks Michigan. From the review:
The story unfolds over the years as Saul and Patsy start a family, and their quaint lives are infiltrated by children — their own, and others' kids. One in particular jars their complacency — Saul's mentally imbalanced student, Gordy, who stalks the family. Jonathan Franzen gets all the brainy Midwestern-writer applause, but I sure like the quieter Baxter, with his funny and thoughtful prose that doesn't scream but speaks.

Steve Amick's The Lake, The River & The Other Lake sounds like a great read too:
Being an Iowan, I feel weird shouting out The Mitten twice, but this sprawling novel about a fictional tourist town in Michigan lake country is so jam-packed with quirky and awesome characters, I can't help it.

There's the Ojibwe Indian, Roger Drinkwater, who is driven mad by Jet Skis. The lonely widower, the Rev. Eugene Reecher, who grapples with a porn addiction. The bigoted orchard owner Hubert vonBushberger, who is blindsided when his son secretly marries a migrant worker — she shows up for work pregnant at the start of the season — and vonBushberger's daughter, who makes matters worse by bringing home a Japanese dude. Think of this as an edgy, dark Lake Woebegon.

I haven't read either of these books, so I can't fully endorse them. Hopefully one of us will read them soon and we can offer full reviews. I'll keep you posted.

2 comments:

  1. I read Steve Amick's book years ago but I can't remember anything about it. As for Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love is great. He's a great writer overall though.

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