Picked this up at Shakespeare's (a 2nd hand bookshop in Prague) as I had already read "Snow falling on Cedars" and "Our lady of the forest".

This is a book of short stories, giving glimpses into different lives, with the recurring themes of nature, growing up and discovery. As with many a book of short stories, you are left wanting to find out more about the characters. I particularly enjoyed the disturbing undertones of "Piranhas" and the poignancy of "The flower garden".

RELEASE NOTES:

Taking the book to the meetup.

Released as part of the 2006 Never Judge a Book By Its Cover challenge.

Hi Soffitta1 - it was good to meet you today at Caffe Nero (no longer a meet-up virgin!), and thanks for thinking of me with this book :)

(23/02) I've had this quite a long time - but finished now :) Review to follow

To my embarassment I didn’t connect the title with the recurring themes in these short stories until about 2/3’s through; reflections on lost youth from old age ‘the country behind’, and, coming of age dilemmas, ‘the country ahead of us’...sometimes both together. I like Guterson as a writer of novels and was impressed that he could constrain his expansive and descriptive style into this form, although in most cases we are left with subtle elegiac tales, still set largely in his beloved Pacific North West.

From the blurb, ‘...Guterson’s characters go into the wilderness in search of mallards or silver trout, they discover other things instead: the decay of their youthful ardor; the motiveless cruelty of strangers; their own capacity for deception and grief.’

The old men in Opening Day, Arcturus and American Elm have a dignified pathos; the lost youth/opportunities in Day of the Moonwalk and The Flower Garden are infinitely sadder. Piranhas is just plain weird (unusual in this collection).

I picked up this book during my Easter break in Suffolk. Set against a stark North American landscape, each of these stories has a theme of loss; from the loss of love, through the loss of youth, to the loss of hope and self worth. Though rather bleak, I enjoyed meeting this series of strange, unhappy characters.

After posting my journal entry, I saw the comments of the previous two readers. I have to agree, there was something deeply disturbing about Piranhas; "Paul imagined how it might be to kill his parents. The thought caused him only minor remorse, because he felt certain they deserved it, somehow." As Soffita1 said, these skilful stories leave us wondering what on earth comes next....

RELEASE NOTES:

I hope you enjoy this book. Please write a journal entry saying what you thought of it. Then pass it to a friend or leave it for a stranger to find.