Shotgun Lovesongs

Shotgun Lovesongs

by Nickolas Butler

★★★★☆

A few good friends grow up together in Little Wing, Wisconsin. There's Henry, a good man and husband to Beth. He’s the stable and solid one who stayed in town and took over his father’s farm. Lee is a successful musician who travels the world but still longs for the normalcy of his friends’ lives. Then we meet Kip. He’s a successful businessman who just returned to town from Chicago. He's also kind of an asshole who’s always trying to prove something, but usually just sends up pissing people off. Finally there's Ronnie, the rodeo star who was injured and lost some of his mental abilities. He’s sweet and enthusiastic, but sometimes frustrated by his situation.

Though it's set in Wisconsin (not my home state), the descriptions of bitter Midwestern nights or sultry summer days are so achingly familiar. Some of the moments described felt like my own childhood. The point of view rotates between each of the characters, giving us a chance to see the situations through their eyes.

The story is about what we expect from life versus what we end up with. It’s about wanting whatever's on the other side of that fence where the grass is always greener. It's about the complications that life throws our way and the friends that stick with you through it all.

The writing and characters drive the story much more than any major plot point does. We stumble through everyone's lives alongside them, connecting at weddings and other major events, but it’s really about the moments that don't seem big at the time, but later mean everything.

It reminded me and some ways of A Visit from the GoonSquad and in others of The Interestings. It was less precocious than The Interestings and felt more like people I might actually know. It's not as complex as A Visit from the Goon Squad, but has the same feel of overlapping lives with the vein of music running through it all. Considering that I loved both of those books, it’s not surprising that this one worked so well for me. 

BOTTOM LINE: This was a fast read for me and I really liked it. The people felt familiar and their lives were so relatable. Perfect to read while sitting on the back porch and sipping a Leinenkugel.

*The audio version was really good!

Station Eleven

Station Eleven

by Emily St. John Mandel

★★★★★

 

I heard a lot of mentions of this book before I read it, (though I was able to completely avoid spoilers), but no one told me that it was “A Visit from the Goon Squad” plus the end of the world. Oh my gosh, this book! I literally started the audiobook on a Saturday morning and then couldn't stop cleaning the house because I wanted to have a reason to keep listening to it. 

 

Let me repeat that… this book made me clean so I could keep listening, that has never happened before. There've been times when stayed in my car for an extra minute to keep listening, but I have NEVER spent an entire day cleaning my house because I wanted to keep listening to the book. That's how good this was!

 

Technically this book is about a post-apocalyptic world. But please do not let that deter you from reading this if that's not your thing. This book really is one of the most well written connected character sketches that I've ever found. It reminded me so much of Egan's book in so many ways. It jumps back-and-forth in time and different chapters are from different characters’ point-of-view. The stories are all connected, woven together to create a big picture view of their world.

 

The book "The Passage", which was such a big hit a couple years ago, is similar in some ways, but it frustrated to me for a couple reasons. My biggest problem with it was that you became invested in a couple characters that pretty much disappeared after a certain point in the story. For a second in this book I thought the author was going to do the same thing. I didn't realize at first that the storytelling was going to be nonlinear. We jumped around in time, getting to know what our characters are like both before and after the "end of the world".

 

I was swept away in the stories at every point in the novel, which is difficult for an author to do when you’re juggling so many characters. Normally you get bored with one story and want to return to a different one. But in Station Eleven, each characters’ tale adds so much depth to the others that you don’t care who you are reading about in a given moment.

 

BOTTOM LINE: Just fantastic, my favorite read of the year so far! If the genre or plot doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, I’d encourage you to check it out anyway. It's one of those books that rises above the basic plot points it contains and becomes something that almost anyone can connect with. It's more about human nature, grief, loneliness, and how we are able to connect with others. It's beautiful and I know I'll be reading it again.

Jennifer Egan Reading

When I first read A Visit from the Goon Squad two years ago I loved it. So when I had the opportunity to hear Jennifer Egan speak last month I was thrilled! During the evening she read the whole first chapter of that book and then answered audience member’s questions.


One of my favorite aspects of her talk was hearing about the process of creating Goon Squad. It started as a single short story about a woman finding a wallet. This story was inspired by Egan herself being robbed on the day she had to fly from New York City to California. Shortly after that experience she saw a wallet sitting out in a public restroom and the story was born.

After writing it she was curious about the other characters mentioned in the chapter and she quickly realized that she had something more than a single short story. As it grew into a book she set three rules for herself:

1) Each chapter had to be about a new character.

2) Each chapter had to feel different and unique (1st person, interview, PowerPoint, etc.)

3) Each chapter had to stand alone; readers deserved closure with each chapter because they’re being tossed into a completely new situation each time.

She said the book is a bit like a concept album. In the same way that musical artists will occasionally create albums (especially in the 1970s) where each track had a different style, this book is set up in a similar way.

Egan was incredibly kind and engaging. She was also bright and very honest about her work and inspiration. I loved her comments on trying something new. She recently published an entire short story “Black Box” on Twitter via The New Yorker. She talked about trying the new form of media as a sort of modern day serialization like the way Charles Dickens used to publish his books. She was so open to finding new ways to experiment with creative flow.

As soon as I got home I started re-reading the book and I enjoyed it even more the second time around. I remembered bits and pieces from each characters’ life and so seeing the complete picture once more was wonderful! I will definitely be reading more of her work as soon as I can.

Photos by moi.

A Visit From the Goon Squad

A Visit From the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan
★★★★★

This Pulitzer-Prize winner has gotten a lot of press for its unconventional format. I was a bit wary of the hype, but decided to give it a shot. The book opens with Sasha, a young woman in New York and I was immediately hooked. In the next chapter we meet her boss Bennie, then Rhea, who knew Bennie when he was young, then Lou, Bennie’s mentor, then Lou’s kids, etc. Each new section gives the story from a different person’s point of view, often flitting years into the past or future.

For me, chapter 4 “Safari,” in which we meet siblings Rolph and Charlie, was the turning point in the book. It showed me the stories were not just fun glimpses into random people’s lives. All of a sudden the book had an unexpected depth and every new chapter deepened the characters’ overall world.

The beautifully drawn maze reveals dozens of interconnected lives. It weaves them together, creating a tapestry that spans decades and continents. The format never seems forced, but instead it enhances each individual story by tying it to someone else’s complicated world.

My brain felt like it actually had to work as I started each new chapter. I wondered who this new person was and how they were connected to the bigger picture. I had to pay close attention to all the peripheral people in each section, because I never knew who I would be getting to know next. Yet with all those layers, the book never loses its feeling of lightness as readers play connect the dots with the characters.

Egan created such a wide web of lives that there is no chance for boredom or a lag in the book. The much lauded PowerPoint chapter lives up to the hype as well. It doesn’t feel gimmicky and works perfectly in the context of that person’s life. She also occasionally reveals flashes of what happens to people 20 or 30 years down the road, which sounds cheesy, but it worked perfectly.

I debated my rating on this, because it's by no means a perfect book, but in the end I really loved reading it and I know it's one I'll want to read again*. The thing that really tipped it over the edge is that I want to talk about it. I finished it and couldn't stop thinking about the characters and how they were connected and where each story lay in the overall chronology and I just wanted to discuss it with someone. And to me, that makes it a great book.

*I read a library book, but bought a paperback copy I found at Half Priced Books the day after finishing it.