Play Book Tag discussion

Some things about this book--

Winner of the 2008 Milkweed National Fiction Prize, for "works of high literary quality that embody humane values and contribute to cultural understanding."

Driftless-- In southwestern Wisconsin, there is an area roughly one hundred and sixty miles long and seventy miles wide with uniqye features. The last of the Pleistocene glaciers did not trample through the area, and the glacial deposits of rock, sand and silt--called drift--are missing. Hence its name, the Driftless Region. Singularly unrefined, it endured in its hilly, primitive form, untoched by the shaping hands of those cold giants.

I read this for my F2F bookclub and it is not a book I would have read otherwise. The early chapters introduce the characters, all living their rural lives with different degrees of loneliness, fortitude, secrets, regrets, hopes and dreams. Their lives are largely shaped by the landscape and the seasons, especially the long hard Wisconsin winter. In many ways their lives are dependent upon the community, and one character, July, is the common thread in all their lives. These chapters were slow going for me and I almost gave up on it, but something made me keep going, perhaps the sense that people and events were going to start to come together. Indeed the people come together and some of the characters behave in very unexpected ways. This added a good deal of humor and perhaps insight into life in rural America.

In addition to the slow start, I felt some of the characters were either too insightful into their lives and the "what ifs," or incredibly naive. Clearly Rhodes chose to write about the driftless, those who chose to stay in Driftless despite the hardship and challenges, but except for July, I couldnt help but wonder why they stayed. Maybe the glaciers didn't trample Driftless, but the winters and economics of farming sure did.

(3.5 stars rounded up)

Great review, Shelly.
This book does give you a lot to think about and clearly would fit a thought provoking tag.
Have you had your book club discussion yet? I'd love to hear about that.

Our bookclub got snowed out, so it will wait until next month!

Shelly wrote: "Our bookclub got snowed out, so it will wait until next month!"

Ah, well next month then.

This is one of my favorite books, partly because I live near that area, but mostly because of the theme of the interconnectedness of people. At first, I thought it was a flaw that characters would pop up at just the right moments to interact with each other. But I realized that is the point, we are there for each other, which comes out in a sermon toward the end of the book. There are no really mean characters in the book, they all turn out to have some humanity. It's kind of a weird combination of styles, with some magical realism of the panther/wildcat, some zaniness with the odd couple on their joyride, some social commentary about the evil milk company, some philosophy about life.