THE SATURDAY MORNING BOOK REPORT
Another bookbube book. A number of people, including my wife, had said very favorable things about another book by this author, but the premise of this story of his sounded more inviting. So here we are...
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger DNF 45%
This book was sold to me as a homage to Mark Twain's Huck & Tom. It may be, but a homage to the dark side of those stories. I'm not a fan of dark fiction. I read 200 pages of it in the first day, before I realized I was just making myself read it, without really enjoying it. I guess I continued because he's said to be such a good writer. Still, good or not, half way through, I decided that it wasn't the book I was looking for. I had other books to read. So I moved on.
Still, what is the story about, you ask?
The story involves two brothers, 12 & 16, orphans in a Minnesota orphanage mostly devoted to Native American children. Through the eyes of the 12 year old narrator, we are given a glimpse of the grim life of orphans in 1930's America; poor food, lots of work, no fun, and physical and sexual abuse. The younger brother is constantly getting into trouble. A hundred or so pages in, he incurs the wrath of a brutal sexual abuser, who drags him out to the quarry where he intends to kill him, eventually. The boy, however, manages to escape his clutches, narrowly escapes falling to his death, which is a fate the abuser does not escape, thanks the thoughtless action of the boy. Then, together with his older brother, they rescue the the recently orphaned daughter of one of the workers from the clutches of the evil orphanage director, rob the orphanage of its ill-gotten gains, and then, along with the 12 year old's his best friend, a mute Indian, they take off in a canoe down the Gilead River. Along the way they meet more unpleasant people, the 12 year old shots and kills a murderous farmer who, in a mad fit of anger, probably would have killed them. Not long after this point, I decided I didn't care to travel with them further.
I have several problems with this book. Unlike Mark Twain's boys, this reads like the narration of an adult. It is simply too nuanced for a 12 year old orphan narrator to be believable. And yet, not nuanced enough, at least in one respect. That being the phycological toll of the violence of the story, including the killing of two men by the narrator. This is not touched on. The 12 year old remorselessly kills bad guys like a pulp story hardboiled PI. Of course a first person narrator tells the story how and what they wish to tell it, it is probably the 12 year old as an old man, but still, I found the story told neither believable nor entertaining.
The second problem is related to the first; the unnecessary amount of violence. I would think you could take a canoe trip down Minnesota's Gilead River in the 1930's without everyone you meet being either a murderous farmer, an Indian cowboy recognized you and likely intent on turning you in for a reward, or a band of religious con men. Moreover, I'd have thought spending several full days traveling downstream in a canoe would put a fair amount of miles behind them, and the events they were fleeing. And that any news story concerning a three runaway orphan boys would not make much of a splash in the smalltown mid-America newspapers of the 1930's, and yet everyone they meet recognizes them, seemingly only to propel the plot, while conveniently, they appear to have been the only people canoeing on the river, sailing down it all day unobserved. As a result, I found that the incidents felt contrived for the sake of keeping the plot moving along rather than an organic reflection of the time and place of the story's setting.
Huck Finn certainly encountered bad people, but there was also the joy of adventure. This story lacks that leavening element.
Nitpicks, perhaps, but the bottom line is that I found the story contrived, and one that brought no joy. Not my type of book.
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