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Q Road
Greenland Township, Michigan: On the same acres where farmers once displaced Potawatomi Indians, suburban developers now supplant farmers and prefab homes spring up in last year's cornfields. All along Q Road -- or "Queer Road," as the locals call it -- the old, rural life collides weirdly with the new.
With a cast of lovingly rendered eccentrics and a powerful sense of place, Q Road is a lively tale of nature and human desire that alters the landscape of contemporary fiction.
288 pages, Paperback
First published August 19, 2002
23 people are currently reading
743 people want to read
About the author
Bonnie Jo Campbell
23 books671 followersBonnie Jo Campbell is the author of the National Book Award finalist American Salvage, Women & Other Animals, and the novels Q Road and Once Upon a River. She is the winner of a Pushcart Prize, the AWP Award for Short Fiction, and Southern Review’s 2008 Eudora Welty Prize for “The Inventor, 1972,” which is included in American Salvage. Her work has appeared in Southern Review, Kenyon Review, and Ontario Review. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she studies kobudo, the art of Okinawan weapons, and hangs out with her two donkeys, Jack and Don Quixote.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 108 reviews
May 17, 2017
4.5★
Once Upon a River is on my favorites shelf and a prequel to Q Road, though written after the fact. Lead protagonist Margo only appears here in flashbacks as this one is about daughter Rachel after Margo has disappeared. Except for those flashbacks, the entire story takes place on one particular day and is told from multiple perspectives by residents in Greenland Township, Michigan. Many of whom define quirky and say or do unexpected things that surprise, sometimes shock you. Take Nicole for instance.
“The words pulled Nicole from a dream of driving over her husband's body on the concrete floor of their two car garage, of then backing up and running over him a second time. The last month, she’d been entertaining ever more violent thoughts of killing Steve, but this was the first time she'd actually dreamed it. She tried to soothe away the image of his twisted limbs and mashed internal organs by considering the wholesome brilliance of her wedding day, 18 months ago, a sparkling day which, surely, no other in her life would ever compare.”
And husband Steve? He usually preferred
“dealing with women over 40 or 50, women who wore little or no makeup, women whose houses were not too clean. Such women usually have an easier way about them, weren't anxious or excessive the way young women could be, the way his Nicole sometimes was.”
Then there’s Henrietta.
“For the first decades of her marriage, she tried not to remind Harold too often that she knew a great deal more than he did about a great many things…Henrietta had not always been a hard woman, but in the last thirty years of her life she found herself growing hard in response to her husband growing soft…and could not understand how her husband had come to defend everybody against every unkind word, as though he were Jesus Christ. While a woman might love Jesus well enough, only a naive girl would want to be married to Him.”
A major event is befalling the town on this particular present day where past and future are waging a battle for the land. Rachel is caught in the middle cussing and shooting her way through as she fights for a way of life that only she seems to think is worth living for and preserving to the exclusion of everything and everyone else . . . almost.
“But even she wasn’t strong enough to resist the inevitable indefinitely. Today, even Rachel would have to see that no matter how tightly you held on to a place, it would eventually slip away.”
What or to whom will she cling to if it passes?
“This was not love as Rachel had imagined it might feel—this was an emotion as complicated as a garden, beneath the surface of which roots stretched in all directions to fill a fertile square mile. This was like the fusing of skin and dirt, the coming together of mineral and muscle, something like eternity sped up so that the decay of bones and calcium-rich grit occurred in fast motion.”
Based on my verbose quoting it’s obvious I love her characters and writing. I always find myself in her pages somewhere between the lines.
Once Upon a River is on my favorites shelf and a prequel to Q Road, though written after the fact. Lead protagonist Margo only appears here in flashbacks as this one is about daughter Rachel after Margo has disappeared. Except for those flashbacks, the entire story takes place on one particular day and is told from multiple perspectives by residents in Greenland Township, Michigan. Many of whom define quirky and say or do unexpected things that surprise, sometimes shock you. Take Nicole for instance.
“The words pulled Nicole from a dream of driving over her husband's body on the concrete floor of their two car garage, of then backing up and running over him a second time. The last month, she’d been entertaining ever more violent thoughts of killing Steve, but this was the first time she'd actually dreamed it. She tried to soothe away the image of his twisted limbs and mashed internal organs by considering the wholesome brilliance of her wedding day, 18 months ago, a sparkling day which, surely, no other in her life would ever compare.”
And husband Steve? He usually preferred
“dealing with women over 40 or 50, women who wore little or no makeup, women whose houses were not too clean. Such women usually have an easier way about them, weren't anxious or excessive the way young women could be, the way his Nicole sometimes was.”
Then there’s Henrietta.
“For the first decades of her marriage, she tried not to remind Harold too often that she knew a great deal more than he did about a great many things…Henrietta had not always been a hard woman, but in the last thirty years of her life she found herself growing hard in response to her husband growing soft…and could not understand how her husband had come to defend everybody against every unkind word, as though he were Jesus Christ. While a woman might love Jesus well enough, only a naive girl would want to be married to Him.”
A major event is befalling the town on this particular present day where past and future are waging a battle for the land. Rachel is caught in the middle cussing and shooting her way through as she fights for a way of life that only she seems to think is worth living for and preserving to the exclusion of everything and everyone else . . . almost.
“But even she wasn’t strong enough to resist the inevitable indefinitely. Today, even Rachel would have to see that no matter how tightly you held on to a place, it would eventually slip away.”
What or to whom will she cling to if it passes?
“This was not love as Rachel had imagined it might feel—this was an emotion as complicated as a garden, beneath the surface of which roots stretched in all directions to fill a fertile square mile. This was like the fusing of skin and dirt, the coming together of mineral and muscle, something like eternity sped up so that the decay of bones and calcium-rich grit occurred in fast motion.”
Based on my verbose quoting it’s obvious I love her characters and writing. I always find myself in her pages somewhere between the lines.
March 22, 2012
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
I recently found myself with the opportunity to interview revered author Bonnie Jo Campbell for the CCLaP Podcast; and so before doing so, I thought it would be beneficial to read her two most popular books besides the one I've already read (2011's Once Upon a River, that is, considered by many to be a frontrunner for this year's Pulitzer). And indeed, it turned out to be quite important that I read her 1999 breakout novel Q Road before talking with her, because it turns out to be a clever sort of prequel/sequel to the Once Upon a River title we'll mainly be discussing; set on the cusp of the new millennium, it tells the story of the "last hurrah" of sorts for a rural farmland area just outside of Kalamazoo, Michigan before finally succumbing to the capitalist steamroller of exurban subdivisions, chain restaurants and pristine golf courses, an Altmanesque interrelated ensemble character piece in which one of the characters (teenage tomboy and child bride Rachel Crane) just happens to be the daughter of the main character of Once Upon a River (the even more hardcore tomboy Margo Crane), only with the newer novel set in the older 1970s and examining Margo's own teenage years as a tight-lipped, sharpshooting pregnant runaway.
And in fact you can look at all three of these books in much the same light (including the slim 2009 story collection American Salvage, the third title in this list); they are all episodic in nature, take a sympathetic and nonjudgemental look at the kinds of characters we would traditionally call dumb white trash, yet can frequently reach a level of poetic harshness and violence akin to a Sam Shepard play, stories that don't excuse the behavior of the meth addicts, racists and uneducated hillbillies that populate her universe but that don't dismiss such characters either, an attitude that I'm sure at least partly stems from Campbell's own background as a willful tomboy in this exact kind of rural Michigan environment (but more on that in the finished podcast episode, coming next week). Powerful and unflinching, yet beautiful and easily readable, it's no surprise after reading these three books that Campbell would have the kind of intensely passionate fanbase that she does, as well as racking up such academic tentpoles as a Pushcart Prize, Eudora Welty Prize, National Book Award nomination and National Book Critics Circle Award nomination; and I wholeheartedly recommend them all to a general audience.
Out of 10:
Q Road: 9.4
American Salvage: 9.0
I recently found myself with the opportunity to interview revered author Bonnie Jo Campbell for the CCLaP Podcast; and so before doing so, I thought it would be beneficial to read her two most popular books besides the one I've already read (2011's Once Upon a River, that is, considered by many to be a frontrunner for this year's Pulitzer). And indeed, it turned out to be quite important that I read her 1999 breakout novel Q Road before talking with her, because it turns out to be a clever sort of prequel/sequel to the Once Upon a River title we'll mainly be discussing; set on the cusp of the new millennium, it tells the story of the "last hurrah" of sorts for a rural farmland area just outside of Kalamazoo, Michigan before finally succumbing to the capitalist steamroller of exurban subdivisions, chain restaurants and pristine golf courses, an Altmanesque interrelated ensemble character piece in which one of the characters (teenage tomboy and child bride Rachel Crane) just happens to be the daughter of the main character of Once Upon a River (the even more hardcore tomboy Margo Crane), only with the newer novel set in the older 1970s and examining Margo's own teenage years as a tight-lipped, sharpshooting pregnant runaway.
And in fact you can look at all three of these books in much the same light (including the slim 2009 story collection American Salvage, the third title in this list); they are all episodic in nature, take a sympathetic and nonjudgemental look at the kinds of characters we would traditionally call dumb white trash, yet can frequently reach a level of poetic harshness and violence akin to a Sam Shepard play, stories that don't excuse the behavior of the meth addicts, racists and uneducated hillbillies that populate her universe but that don't dismiss such characters either, an attitude that I'm sure at least partly stems from Campbell's own background as a willful tomboy in this exact kind of rural Michigan environment (but more on that in the finished podcast episode, coming next week). Powerful and unflinching, yet beautiful and easily readable, it's no surprise after reading these three books that Campbell would have the kind of intensely passionate fanbase that she does, as well as racking up such academic tentpoles as a Pushcart Prize, Eudora Welty Prize, National Book Award nomination and National Book Critics Circle Award nomination; and I wholeheartedly recommend them all to a general audience.
Out of 10:
Q Road: 9.4
American Salvage: 9.0
June 12, 2018
Bonnie Jo Campbell can flat-out write. Her descriptions of the characters, the landscape, and life in rural Michigan are stunning.
February 17, 2017
A literary novel about quirky neighbors in Greenland Township, Michigan living on Q Road, known to the locals as Queer Road. The Centennial Farm of George Harland (and his ancestors) is the focus of the story (reminded me of my aunt's and uncle's farm in Flushing, Michigan...they, too, owned a Centennial Farm, sign and all).
Rachel loves the land and loves to cuss. In fact, she swore throughout whether it was warranted or not. George loves Rachel. The rest of the characters move in and out of the action (what action there is). The biggest action occurs in regards to the old barn on the property.
Language is colorful and rich; the characters are all interconnected.
2.5 stars actually
Rachel loves the land and loves to cuss. In fact, she swore throughout whether it was warranted or not. George loves Rachel. The rest of the characters move in and out of the action (what action there is). The biggest action occurs in regards to the old barn on the property.
Language is colorful and rich; the characters are all interconnected.
2.5 stars actually
June 29, 2022
A pesar de ser un libro donde la historia no avanza tan rápido como en otros, donde se entremezclan pasado y presente con muchos detalles creo que esto último me ha gustado mucho. Dónde está ambientado, cómo te llegas a sumergir en la historia y en la vida de los personajes gracias a todos esos detalles. Es una historia sencilla pero cargada de matices, de opciones de vida diferente en una sociedad rural que está a punto de cambiar.
Este libro llegó a mí como un regalo. A través de una iniciativa de amigo invisible para incentivar la compra en librería de barrio, una persona generosa y mí librera pensaron que este libro se cedía a mis gustos descritos. A pesar de no conocer la autora, ni la historia previa la cuál pronto leeré, ha sido totalmente un acierto y un descubrimiento.
Gracias por el regalo y por poder deleitarme en libros como éste. Es un verdadero placer.
Este libro llegó a mí como un regalo. A través de una iniciativa de amigo invisible para incentivar la compra en librería de barrio, una persona generosa y mí librera pensaron que este libro se cedía a mis gustos descritos. A pesar de no conocer la autora, ni la historia previa la cuál pronto leeré, ha sido totalmente un acierto y un descubrimiento.
Gracias por el regalo y por poder deleitarme en libros como éste. Es un verdadero placer.
October 21, 2016
I loved the three Bonnie Jo Campbell books I read before this one -- two of short stories and one novel. She's one of my favorite authors still writing and I have all her books and her chapbook of poetry on my shelf. So you can imagine how excited I was when I saw that I would be in Portland, ME when she would be doing a reading at Longfellow's, Portland's "fiercely independent" bookstore. And she was as amazing in person as her books (and website) lead one to think she would be. Before the reading, she mingled with those in the store, chatting and handing out book marks and a graphic comic critique of her lasts book. (Unexpectedly, Carolyn Chute, a Maine author, appeared with her and they worked well together.) This was Campbell's first appearance ever in the state of Maine. I came home after the reading and immediately began reading her first novel - Q Road.
Campbell writes about poor, working class, people. In this book, the focus is on Rachel (the daughter of the main character of her later novel Once Upon a River), her husband George (a May-December marriage), and David, a twelve-year old, asthmatic boy whose alcoholic mother often forgets to refill his inhaler prescription. David loves George and Rachel and wants badly to be George's hired hand. George owns the largest farm in the area but while land-rich makes barely enough money farming to pay his bills. (I can relate to that - the dairy farm I grew up on kept us well fed but the income it produced did little more than keep the bills paid.) The story is focused on one day - October 9, 1999 - but during the day, the characters often think back to prior events that fill in the back story. The reader learns about the Potawatomi tribe that lived in the area before it the rich land was discovered by white settlers, the widowed school teacher who was fired for having a relationship with a farm hand, George's grandparents and brother, and, among other things, wooly bear caterpillars.
Campbell knows how to turn a phrase -- "Steve retreated from the creaking wooden porch and glanced out over the field of stubble beside the house, imagined it greening and springing forth with a fresh crop, in a scene overlaying the brownish expanse. Such fields just thrust their fertility up at a man, begging him, Plow me, sow me, reap me." She knows how to develop characters. She knows how to set the stage, so that you can see the scene in your head. She knows how to add a bit of humor. She doesn't make excuses for the worst actions of her characters but she also doesn't put them down. Her characters are real.
I guess you could say I'm a big fan of Bonnie Jo Campbell and look forward to reading the novel she is currently writing, which she says is about a woman with a mathematics degree.
Campbell writes about poor, working class, people. In this book, the focus is on Rachel (the daughter of the main character of her later novel Once Upon a River), her husband George (a May-December marriage), and David, a twelve-year old, asthmatic boy whose alcoholic mother often forgets to refill his inhaler prescription. David loves George and Rachel and wants badly to be George's hired hand. George owns the largest farm in the area but while land-rich makes barely enough money farming to pay his bills. (I can relate to that - the dairy farm I grew up on kept us well fed but the income it produced did little more than keep the bills paid.) The story is focused on one day - October 9, 1999 - but during the day, the characters often think back to prior events that fill in the back story. The reader learns about the Potawatomi tribe that lived in the area before it the rich land was discovered by white settlers, the widowed school teacher who was fired for having a relationship with a farm hand, George's grandparents and brother, and, among other things, wooly bear caterpillars.
Campbell knows how to turn a phrase -- "Steve retreated from the creaking wooden porch and glanced out over the field of stubble beside the house, imagined it greening and springing forth with a fresh crop, in a scene overlaying the brownish expanse. Such fields just thrust their fertility up at a man, begging him, Plow me, sow me, reap me." She knows how to develop characters. She knows how to set the stage, so that you can see the scene in your head. She knows how to add a bit of humor. She doesn't make excuses for the worst actions of her characters but she also doesn't put them down. Her characters are real.
I guess you could say I'm a big fan of Bonnie Jo Campbell and look forward to reading the novel she is currently writing, which she says is about a woman with a mathematics degree.
October 24, 2011
Sequel to Once Upon A River that was written first. Another great story about quirky characters surviving outside established norms. In this book they are connected to the farm land and rather than the river. The suburbs are encroaching and a way of live is disappearing...Sound familiar? The main character didn't grab me like Margo, and I was sad that Margo didn't appear in the book, but still a great read. Wonder if she will appear in a future book?
November 16, 2009
Only picked this up because I needed a “Q” for an A-Z reading challenge I’m doing this year. It’s set in Michigan, so I connected with that part. I really liked it, then there was a chapter where horrible things were happening and I almost put it down I was so upset, but I’m glad I pushed on because by the end I liked it again.
September 2, 2020
"Each time a car drove by, the birds flew up from the birds flew up from the lawn in a wave, as though they were parts of some larger whole. Around noon she saw a single rose-breasted grosbeak-a Jesus bird, her mother used to call it, because of the blood-red stain on its chest. Just after the mail truck passed, an indigo bunting glimmered like blue metal.”
In a small town, near Kalamazoo Michigan, runs Q Road, aka “Queer Road”. Populated with a mix of misfits and working stiffs, trying to navigate through the modern age. I loved Campbell's short story collection, American Salvage. This isn't as strong but still worth reading. 3.5 stars
In a small town, near Kalamazoo Michigan, runs Q Road, aka “Queer Road”. Populated with a mix of misfits and working stiffs, trying to navigate through the modern age. I loved Campbell's short story collection, American Salvage. This isn't as strong but still worth reading. 3.5 stars
April 17, 2023
Finally got around to reading this after it sat on my to be read shelf for 13 Years and it was beautiful and lovely.
November 4, 2025
Draws you in and keeps moving - character to character, from its one crucial day back to the both the near and distant past.
Written beautifully with insight that puts you inside all of it - humans, animals, plants, land, fire.
Written beautifully with insight that puts you inside all of it - humans, animals, plants, land, fire.
January 5, 2019
The sense of history in this book was really great. The juxtaposition of the Potawatomi, farmers, and suburbanites was interesting and present throughout the book.
August 17, 2022
This was my first exposure to the writing of BJC, and I’m so impressed that I have been extolling her skill to anyone who will listen. Beautifully rendered quirky characters and a plot that is so evenly paced while not manipulating the reader both contribute to a very satisfying read. Glad to have found her and intend to read more (and bring to my book group).
January 26, 2012
To make things a bit confusing: Bonnie Jo Campbell wrote this novel BEFORE her latest novel "Once Upon A River" (which I really liked. Both share some of the same characters. BUT the latest novel "Ounce Upon a River" is a prequel to this novel "Q Road." To further confuse things, I happened to read these books out of the sequence (in which they were written).
That said, one of the main characters in this novel (Q Road)is the daughter of the main character in the other novel (Once Upon a River) which is one of the main reasons I read it. And it was interesting and sad to see how much daughter turned out like mother. Both are really strange, fascinating, almost animal-like women, without stereotypical female characteristics or sensibilities that seem almost a luxury for these women, whose main goal is to survive.
More so than "Once upon a River," this novel looks at the evolution of an area of central Michigan land - going back and forth in time to show how it evolved, from being Indian territory to farmland owned by white settlers to the current farmland gradually evolving into exurbia. It also documents an interesting modern-day situation we're seeing a lot here in Iowa: the tensions that inevitably arise when new suburban-style homes are built near barely hanging-on farms and the clash between neighbors who have very different, yes, sensibilities: suburban vs. rural
The novel bogs down a bit in the middle, with so many characters and digressions (often about the natural life in the area...Campbell is obsessed with wooly caterpillars) that I got a bit lost. But the plot eventually gets clearer and more riveting. (Which made me wish I'd paid more attention earlier to some of the characters that seemed minor but ultimately aren't as minor as I thought.)
That said, one of the main characters in this novel (Q Road)is the daughter of the main character in the other novel (Once Upon a River) which is one of the main reasons I read it. And it was interesting and sad to see how much daughter turned out like mother. Both are really strange, fascinating, almost animal-like women, without stereotypical female characteristics or sensibilities that seem almost a luxury for these women, whose main goal is to survive.
More so than "Once upon a River," this novel looks at the evolution of an area of central Michigan land - going back and forth in time to show how it evolved, from being Indian territory to farmland owned by white settlers to the current farmland gradually evolving into exurbia. It also documents an interesting modern-day situation we're seeing a lot here in Iowa: the tensions that inevitably arise when new suburban-style homes are built near barely hanging-on farms and the clash between neighbors who have very different, yes, sensibilities: suburban vs. rural
The novel bogs down a bit in the middle, with so many characters and digressions (often about the natural life in the area...Campbell is obsessed with wooly caterpillars) that I got a bit lost. But the plot eventually gets clearer and more riveting. (Which made me wish I'd paid more attention earlier to some of the characters that seemed minor but ultimately aren't as minor as I thought.)
October 7, 2011
A quiet book about a group of neighbors in rural Michigan. Rachel is the closest to being our protagonist, and she is quite a character with her constant swearing, gardening, and rifle-carrying attitude and she's only 17. Her mother killed a man and disappeared, leaving Rachel on her own at 15 when George, the main landowner in the area, takes an interest in her. Each chapter could focus on any one of this town (even one chapter about Grey Cat), and we get to know their individual shameful desires, and always their disappointments in life. All though many are connected by family, or town history, or even relative geographical proximity, they all become connected when George's old barn goes up in flames.
September 10, 2011
After American Salvage, Q Road is probably Bonnie Jo Campbell's strongest book. I recently interviewed this past summer for Knee-Magazine, so I had the chance to read her entire catalog.
Q Road is a novel told from multiple view points, with each chapter devoted to a single character. As the story moves along, the characters lives begin to intermingle. It is at once about a small Michigan township and of course, like any great story, it is also about the world. While the novel is heavy on characters, Campbell doesn't take the easy way out and leave readers with no plot to latch onto. Let's just say it involves fire.
If you haven't read Bonnie Jo Campbell, then you're missing out.
Q Road is a novel told from multiple view points, with each chapter devoted to a single character. As the story moves along, the characters lives begin to intermingle. It is at once about a small Michigan township and of course, like any great story, it is also about the world. While the novel is heavy on characters, Campbell doesn't take the easy way out and leave readers with no plot to latch onto. Let's just say it involves fire.
If you haven't read Bonnie Jo Campbell, then you're missing out.
March 1, 2012
I almost put this book down, as it started very slow for me. But I was glad I didn't, really enjoyed it as I got further into the story. This book tells of the lives of people in a small rural area in Michigan, and what happens over the course of one day, October 9, 1999. The action is centered around folks who live along one rural road, mostly farmers, and fills in background for each of them as the day progresses. What I found most engaging was the story of Rachel, a rough and tough young girl, and her love for a little neighbor boy, and her protectiveness of him. I want to read the latest book by this author, which I believe is actually a prequel to this one.
August 21, 2011
I think this is actually my favorite out of Campbell's writing yet. Maybe I'm just more of a land person than a river person, but there is something in this book that really tugs at me inside. The writing is amazing as well. Each sentence is warm and perfect. I like the way this one advances through different characters at once, exploring the main storyline while exploring each character and their interrelation to each other. I would recommend this one to anyone who can read.
August 20, 2011
I just love it when the heros and heroines in a book are ugly and beautiful at the same time. I love it when it's about people who make mistakes and suffer them or even suffer other people's mistakes, but find some hope and love even if it's of an unusual sort or kind of twisted. And I love it when I sympathize with a character who I'd probably hate in real life. And I like beautiful writing. I think I'm hooked on Bonnie Jo Campbell.
April 2, 2013
WOW! I haven't read anything like this in a long time. Q Road, nicknamed Queer Road, is populated by the most peculiar characters ever assembled in a novel. Well, maybe not EVER, but it is certainly up there near the top. While the story takes place on one day, the back stories propel the reader forward. I sometimes can't believe how many fine writers are out there without a huge audience. This book could easily be included in the canon of modern American fiction.
February 4, 2012
This 2002 novel is actually the sequel to her recent one, Once Upon A River. Fascinating look
at these off-beat characters on a small family farm near the Kalamazoo River. Very absorbing
story with an inspiring ending. I recommend her books highly.
at these off-beat characters on a small family farm near the Kalamazoo River. Very absorbing
story with an inspiring ending. I recommend her books highly.
May 8, 2022
Más 6 estrellas que 5...madre mía! Qué viaje emocional con una serie de personajes que parece que agonizan pero a los que el fuego revive. Después del río, la tierra. Ma-ra-vi-llo-so.
February 21, 2021
There was quite a cast of quirky characters to meet in Q Road. Each of them had secrets, problems and hidden desires. There are two new prefab houses across the street from the roadside stand where Rachel sells the fruits and vegetables she grows. There are renters, old residents and an old friend, a cop, who just moved back, sorry he sold off his family farm. He could be a little resentful, especially when his boyhood friend, George decides to marry young Rachel.
Rachel is a pistol. She can't speak without swearing. She marries George so she will own some land, but she's not devious. She loves the land and growing things. David a small, asthmatic neighbor boy comes by to help George put up some bales of hay. David idolizes George and wants everything to go well so George will let him drive the tractor over the summer. Unfortunately, things don't go the way David hoped.
A really lot happens in this story. I'm not going to tell it as Bonnie Jo Campbell does a good job of that herself. It started reminding me of Joe Diffie's Third Rock from the Sun the way things were playing out. In the end, the neighbors on Q Road will know one another a little better, be a little more neighborly and find some of their problems solved. I enjoyed the story.
Rachel is a pistol. She can't speak without swearing. She marries George so she will own some land, but she's not devious. She loves the land and growing things. David a small, asthmatic neighbor boy comes by to help George put up some bales of hay. David idolizes George and wants everything to go well so George will let him drive the tractor over the summer. Unfortunately, things don't go the way David hoped.
A really lot happens in this story. I'm not going to tell it as Bonnie Jo Campbell does a good job of that herself. It started reminding me of Joe Diffie's Third Rock from the Sun the way things were playing out. In the end, the neighbors on Q Road will know one another a little better, be a little more neighborly and find some of their problems solved. I enjoyed the story.
July 16, 2023
No matter how tightly you held on to a place, it would eventually slip away. p186
The truth had a way of slipping out without your realizing it, which was clear proof that talking just led to trouble. p163
The folks that live here might defy some definitions of community; don't pick this up in anticipation of block parties or bar-b-ques in the backyard.
killing herself would have been noble...but living and finding a way to stay here would have been much better. p210
On the surface of it, not much was happening on Q Rd. to indicate major changes for the small population clustered there.
Bonnie Jo Campbell weaves the vagaries of religion and the enigma of intimate relationships with backstories (the original Potowatomi inhabitants) and foreshadowing ( gentrification). With her concise, roving POV, rather than explain or judge, she offers readers intimate access to a variety of lonlinesses, resentments, abandonment and griefs. A pivotal chapter alternates betweens between the cat and the yellow bird that flits through these pages.
Life is both too short to have enough joy, and too brutally long for a man who regrets what he's done. p116
The truth had a way of slipping out without your realizing it, which was clear proof that talking just led to trouble. p163
The folks that live here might defy some definitions of community; don't pick this up in anticipation of block parties or bar-b-ques in the backyard.
killing herself would have been noble...but living and finding a way to stay here would have been much better. p210
On the surface of it, not much was happening on Q Rd. to indicate major changes for the small population clustered there.
Bonnie Jo Campbell weaves the vagaries of religion and the enigma of intimate relationships with backstories (the original Potowatomi inhabitants) and foreshadowing ( gentrification). With her concise, roving POV, rather than explain or judge, she offers readers intimate access to a variety of lonlinesses, resentments, abandonment and griefs. A pivotal chapter alternates betweens between the cat and the yellow bird that flits through these pages.
Life is both too short to have enough joy, and too brutally long for a man who regrets what he's done. p116
August 6, 2021
This might be my new favorite book. I never wanted it to end. Bonnie Jo Campbell is so amazing with words and people. I don’t even want to say characters because they’re not. I know and care about them now. I want to read about them forever.
The book started with a slow burn (not a critique whatsoever, it is still a page turner) but between the 50% and 85% mark (read it on kindle) I don’t even remember turning the pages; it flew by. The last 15% I made myself savor.
The rural Michigan (Kalamazoo farmland-cum-wannabe-suburbia) was just the cherry on top of an already perfect book sundae.
I laughed out loud in spots, teared up in others, and spent ten minutes explaining the whole story (when I was only halfway through it) to my husband who doesn’t read fiction. I love this book.
I read Once Upon A River several years ago and didn’t realize the books were related. Q Road came out first, so Once Upon a River was a prequel, I guess. Anyway, I highly recommend both, and hope for many many more books by Campbell.
The book started with a slow burn (not a critique whatsoever, it is still a page turner) but between the 50% and 85% mark (read it on kindle) I don’t even remember turning the pages; it flew by. The last 15% I made myself savor.
The rural Michigan (Kalamazoo farmland-cum-wannabe-suburbia) was just the cherry on top of an already perfect book sundae.
I laughed out loud in spots, teared up in others, and spent ten minutes explaining the whole story (when I was only halfway through it) to my husband who doesn’t read fiction. I love this book.
I read Once Upon A River several years ago and didn’t realize the books were related. Q Road came out first, so Once Upon a River was a prequel, I guess. Anyway, I highly recommend both, and hope for many many more books by Campbell.
January 28, 2017
Disappointing. I enjoyed American Salvage a great deal. But, in Q Road, the characters are not well developed, and the working class mid western plight misses the boat. The book seemed to jump from character to character, without a coherent story. Maybe this was originally a bunch of short stories that Bonnie tried to string together. And she did some stupid, quaint things like creating a character named Gray Cat. Wow, insightful.
Additionally, you could not feel the character's plight as much as Bonnie's contempt for where she lives. Much of it was about the author, not the characters. She seems obsessed with the way the poor Potawatomi indians were treated in Michigan, noting them a record 35 times, with little development of the theme. And yes, farms have given way to suburbs and more economic pursuits. Grow up Bonnie. I lived in Ohio and Michigan for 25 years, and still maintain a family house way up North, so I know what she's trying to say, but she just seems bitter and reminiscent rather than writing a novel.
Additionally, you could not feel the character's plight as much as Bonnie's contempt for where she lives. Much of it was about the author, not the characters. She seems obsessed with the way the poor Potawatomi indians were treated in Michigan, noting them a record 35 times, with little development of the theme. And yes, farms have given way to suburbs and more economic pursuits. Grow up Bonnie. I lived in Ohio and Michigan for 25 years, and still maintain a family house way up North, so I know what she's trying to say, but she just seems bitter and reminiscent rather than writing a novel.
September 10, 2020
Bonnie Jo has a captivating writing style, fluid, unforced, and flowery at times, and this novel shows it on full display. She also explores well and widely the themes of rural decay, modernization, and the inevitability of change. However, if a rural setting and milieu are not of interest to you, the plot may not deliver enough punch to keep you interested and excited.
Luckily, it all worked for me, but others in my book club don’t seem to feel the same.
Luckily, it all worked for me, but others in my book club don’t seem to feel the same.
July 22, 2023
A lot of repetitive information and backstory. I read about the same events numerous times with no addition to the stories. Character perspective jumps around with no warning which makes it seem a lot is going on but the story never really progresses. Some borderline misrepresentation of Native Americans. Rachel was an interesting character though and I wish the story was more of her and less of the other stuff.
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September 9, 2024I enjoyed the structure of this book--it spans the events of one October day in a rural Michigan town, switching POV among multiple town members, each with their own complicated messes. The setting is easy to picture and charming. A few of the characters are more well-developed than others and some more likable than others (the all-seeing April May and Milton's Barn Grill), but overall I enjoyed its themes-- connection to land, what we do with regret and mistakes, how to make a community.
November 11, 2019
What happens in the course of a day as told from several different people and their varying perspectives on life. What I liked about Q Road is that the people were all queer in their own way, they all had issues and random thoughts. This wasn't a fluffy read by any means, it felt like it was about real people and real struggles.
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