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Remember the Main: From Riceville to Riga
Peace River Publishing is proud to introduce Evan James, an exciting new author who has written Remember the Main: From Riceville to Riga. Drawing inspiration from the Iowa countryside and Post-Soviet Latvia, James weaves a tale of Kevin Schwartz, an innocent and naive young man chasing romance. In an international tour de farce, Kevin finds himself in Latvia pursuing the enigmatic Latvian beauty, Ludkilla. The story chronicles Kevin's Catholic upbringing along the Wapsipincon River in Riceville, Iowa before landing in a strange country. Kevin encounters a culture clash when arriving in Latvia. Join along in Kevin's hilarious adventures as he meets fascinating characters and engages in astonishing situations that lead him to question everything he knows.
284 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 8, 2011
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 24, 2014
I must have gotten this freebie because the blurb mentioned Iowa and I was feeling nostalgic for cornfields, cows, lilacs, peonies, rhubarb... This cured me. I can easily go another 25 years without going back. Make that 50.
When the story starts, Kevin is a kid and it feels very 1950. As he grows up, though, it's clearly much more recent (last president I remember mentioned was Clinton). He graduates, goes to college, and then... goes back home and does nothing. By this time, his internal dialogue still sounds the same, so I'm wondering if he's developmentally delayed or something. He's just schlepping through life and processing things just... not fully. Is he really a simpleton or is this just Iowa?
I'm thinking it's a lot of both, with a giant helping of catholic brainwashing to hold it all together.
How he manages to pick Latvia--and actually get there--is a mystery. Not that his potential "love" interest is much better. Her disinterest (after going to the effort to put herself out there as looking for an American husband) is confusing; she seems to barely tolerate his presence and is incapable of making eye contact or even caring enough to carry on a real conversation. It's more than a lack of a common language. It's complete apathy. She seems devoid of feeling--beautiful, but stony-faced and monotone. Her brother overcompensates by being loud, crude, and uncontrollable.
Kevin seems proud to have broadened his horizons yet really only seems to have gained a hint of insight in the end (from the brother, a guy with no moral compass, who tells him he'll never be happy trying to be what others want). The girlfriend is a bust now that he's accidentally slept with her mother and it's obvious little is going to change about his life--except he might pull his head out of his arse and assert himself to become the manager at the Piggly Wiggly now his boss has died. I don't feel optimistic that he'll move out of his parents' house and cope with adulthood. His pathetic trip to Riga will be his only claim to fame and I doubt he'll do anything more exciting, unless it maybe involves an unhealthy obsession with Dutch porn.
I don't get why so much effort went into the tale of the pedophile priest from his youth as he doesn't even seem to appreciate the fact he'd felt sorry for himself for not being a victim or that this is someone who shaped his concepts of "good" and "bad." Ludkilla's sole bit of wisdom was declaring they don't need fables and fairy tales seems to fly over his head.
I don't even know how to process the story itself, but it certainly has given me a lot to question about Midwestern sensibilities, xenophobia, willful ignorance, and that "kinder, gentler" era so many regressive conservatives seem to want to cling to so badly, to say nothing of my family, who seem more mystified by the year as to who I am.
Kevin will undoubtedly see this adventure of proof that all he really needs is in his own back yard (a nod to Dorothy Gale). I see it as proof shielding yourself from what's different will make you strange and unable to cope with the rest of humanity.
Not the intended moral of the story, I'm sure, but damned if I know what it was supposed to be.
When the story starts, Kevin is a kid and it feels very 1950. As he grows up, though, it's clearly much more recent (last president I remember mentioned was Clinton). He graduates, goes to college, and then... goes back home and does nothing. By this time, his internal dialogue still sounds the same, so I'm wondering if he's developmentally delayed or something. He's just schlepping through life and processing things just... not fully. Is he really a simpleton or is this just Iowa?
I'm thinking it's a lot of both, with a giant helping of catholic brainwashing to hold it all together.
How he manages to pick Latvia--and actually get there--is a mystery. Not that his potential "love" interest is much better. Her disinterest (after going to the effort to put herself out there as looking for an American husband) is confusing; she seems to barely tolerate his presence and is incapable of making eye contact or even caring enough to carry on a real conversation. It's more than a lack of a common language. It's complete apathy. She seems devoid of feeling--beautiful, but stony-faced and monotone. Her brother overcompensates by being loud, crude, and uncontrollable.
Kevin seems proud to have broadened his horizons yet really only seems to have gained a hint of insight in the end (from the brother, a guy with no moral compass, who tells him he'll never be happy trying to be what others want). The girlfriend is a bust now that he's accidentally slept with her mother and it's obvious little is going to change about his life--except he might pull his head out of his arse and assert himself to become the manager at the Piggly Wiggly now his boss has died. I don't feel optimistic that he'll move out of his parents' house and cope with adulthood. His pathetic trip to Riga will be his only claim to fame and I doubt he'll do anything more exciting, unless it maybe involves an unhealthy obsession with Dutch porn.
I don't get why so much effort went into the tale of the pedophile priest from his youth as he doesn't even seem to appreciate the fact he'd felt sorry for himself for not being a victim or that this is someone who shaped his concepts of "good" and "bad." Ludkilla's sole bit of wisdom was declaring they don't need fables and fairy tales seems to fly over his head.
I don't even know how to process the story itself, but it certainly has given me a lot to question about Midwestern sensibilities, xenophobia, willful ignorance, and that "kinder, gentler" era so many regressive conservatives seem to want to cling to so badly, to say nothing of my family, who seem more mystified by the year as to who I am.
Kevin will undoubtedly see this adventure of proof that all he really needs is in his own back yard (a nod to Dorothy Gale). I see it as proof shielding yourself from what's different will make you strange and unable to cope with the rest of humanity.
Not the intended moral of the story, I'm sure, but damned if I know what it was supposed to be.
Displaying 1 of 1 review