What do you think?
Rate this book
Lions
Bonnie Nadzam—author of the critically acclaimed, award-winning debut, Lamb —returns with this scorching, haunting portrait of a rural community in a "living ghost town" on the brink of collapse, and the individuals who are confronted with either chasing their dreams or—against all reason—staying where they are.
Lions is set on the high plains of Colorado, a nearly deserted place, steeped in local legends and sparse in population. Built to be a glorious western city upon a hill, it was never fit for farming, mining, trading, or any of the illusory sources of wealth its pioneers imagined. The Walkers have been settled on its barren terrain for generations—a simple family in a town otherwise still taken in by stories of bigger, better, brighter.
When a traveling stranger appears one day, his unsettling presence sets off a chain reaction that will change the fates of everyone he encounters. It begins with the patriarch John Walker as he succumbs to a heart attack. His devastated son Gordon is forced to choose between leaving for college with his girlfriend, Leigh, and staying with his family to look after their flailing welding shop and, it is believed, to continue carrying out a mysterious task bequeathed to all Walker men. While Leigh is desperate to make a better life in the world beyond the desolation of Lions, Gordon is strangely hesitant to leave it behind. As more families abandon the town, he is faced with what seem to be their reasonable choices and the burden of betraying his own heart.
A story of awakening, Lions is an exquisite novel that explores ambition and an American obsession with self-improvement, the responsibilities we have to ourselves and each other, as well as the everyday illusions that pass for a life worth living.
Lions is set on the high plains of Colorado, a nearly deserted place, steeped in local legends and sparse in population. Built to be a glorious western city upon a hill, it was never fit for farming, mining, trading, or any of the illusory sources of wealth its pioneers imagined. The Walkers have been settled on its barren terrain for generations—a simple family in a town otherwise still taken in by stories of bigger, better, brighter.
When a traveling stranger appears one day, his unsettling presence sets off a chain reaction that will change the fates of everyone he encounters. It begins with the patriarch John Walker as he succumbs to a heart attack. His devastated son Gordon is forced to choose between leaving for college with his girlfriend, Leigh, and staying with his family to look after their flailing welding shop and, it is believed, to continue carrying out a mysterious task bequeathed to all Walker men. While Leigh is desperate to make a better life in the world beyond the desolation of Lions, Gordon is strangely hesitant to leave it behind. As more families abandon the town, he is faced with what seem to be their reasonable choices and the burden of betraying his own heart.
A story of awakening, Lions is an exquisite novel that explores ambition and an American obsession with self-improvement, the responsibilities we have to ourselves and each other, as well as the everyday illusions that pass for a life worth living.
288 pages, Paperback
First published July 5, 2016
65 people are currently reading
2434 people want to read
About the author
Bonnie Nadzam
8 books110 followersBonnie Nadzam has published fiction and essays in many journals and magazines, including Granta, Harper’s Magazine, Orion Magazine, A Public Space, The Iowa Review, Epoch, The Kenyon Review, and others. Her first novel, Lamb, was recipient of the Center for Fiction’s Flaherty Dunnan First Novel Award in 2011, and was longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. It has been translated into several languages and made into an award-winning independent film (Orchard 2016) starring Ross Partridge and Oona Laurence. Her second novel, Lions, was released by Grove Press in 2016 and was a USA PEN Finalist for Literary Fiction. She is the co-author, with Dale Jamieson, of Love in the Anthropocene (OR Books 2015). She holds a BA from Carleton College, an MFA from Arizona State University, and an MA and PhD from the University of Southern California.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 227 reviews
October 4, 2016
Unsettling. What happens when A man and his dog walk into Lions, Colorado, and a series of events are triggered. A death and a drowning for a small town that is already haunted, is earth shattering.
Add in tales of past, where hundreds of years ago many people died making their trek to this godforsaken land of dust and heat and their spirits that still reside along the highway, some say.
This is an atmospheric read of a desolate small town that exists outside of the world. The truth of staying and the truth of leaving. A subtle read packed with meaning about choices made and values held.
About a son of a good man who has been left with a burden of a choice that will decide the path of his existence; And that of a girl, who decides what life means and the realization that will haunt her as much as the town itself.
Beautifully written.An understated, underrated and under read story. 5*
Add in tales of past, where hundreds of years ago many people died making their trek to this godforsaken land of dust and heat and their spirits that still reside along the highway, some say.
This is an atmospheric read of a desolate small town that exists outside of the world. The truth of staying and the truth of leaving. A subtle read packed with meaning about choices made and values held.
About a son of a good man who has been left with a burden of a choice that will decide the path of his existence; And that of a girl, who decides what life means and the realization that will haunt her as much as the town itself.
Beautifully written.An understated, underrated and under read story. 5*
June 16, 2016
"Picture high plains in the late spring. Green rows of winter wheat combed across the flat, wide-open ground. The derelict sugar beet factory, it's thousands of red bricks fenced in by chain-link clotted with Russian thistle. Further down the twolane highway, the moon rising like an egg over the hollow grain elevator, rusted at its seams. To the north and west, the sparsely populated town. Golden rectangles of a few lit Windows floating above the plain."
"The place was uninhabitable, too hard, too dusty, too dry, too poor, out of jobs ,out of prospects. The wonder was that they had all stayed so long. For years, like a slowly lifting line of birds there'd been a slow but steady flight out of town. Finally, inside this single summer, all but eleven people would go. One at a time, in the old brick stores and painted houses the windows were boarded or punched out with stones, eyes blind to a place so many years ago shed so much blood to claim."
It was the gorgeous writing , the perfectly constructed phrases describing the place called Lions and the way the author took me to this place that allowed me to accept the unanswered questions, the remaining mysteries that lingered even at the end of the novel. To say this novel is atmospheric would be an understatement. I don't think I've read a novel where the place was so much the story, where I felt such a penetrating sense of place.
Lions is a small town in Colorado that is dying , deserted almost , with a population of not much over 100 , a town that never became the thriving place that its original settlers wanted it to be . The novel focuses on a handful people and what happens after a mysterious stranger comes to town. John Walker , the welder and his wife Georgianna, their son Gordon and his girlfriend Leigh and a few others who have stayed while most people have made the exodus from this desolate place with its abandoned beet sugar factory, gas station, storefronts and homes . It's also the story of people from the past - John's father and grandfather, and further back and the secret they pass down to their sons about going north for days at a time .
Is it a ghost story? Maybe. Nadzam sets the stage in the opening of the book , "If you've ever really loved anyone, you know there's a ghost in everything." Is it a love story ? Most certainly. There's Georgianna and John , May and Boyd , Gordon and Leigh. It's also about how people are shaped by their past , by the stories they tell about the past . It's about choices people make based on what they believe is the right thing for them, even though the odds are against them. It's certainly about so much more than I can express.
If you need resolution to the mysteries and answers to all the questions we are left with, this might not be for you, but you would be missing out on a beautifully written story .
Thanks to Grove Atlantic/Grove Press Black and NetGalley.
"The place was uninhabitable, too hard, too dusty, too dry, too poor, out of jobs ,out of prospects. The wonder was that they had all stayed so long. For years, like a slowly lifting line of birds there'd been a slow but steady flight out of town. Finally, inside this single summer, all but eleven people would go. One at a time, in the old brick stores and painted houses the windows were boarded or punched out with stones, eyes blind to a place so many years ago shed so much blood to claim."
It was the gorgeous writing , the perfectly constructed phrases describing the place called Lions and the way the author took me to this place that allowed me to accept the unanswered questions, the remaining mysteries that lingered even at the end of the novel. To say this novel is atmospheric would be an understatement. I don't think I've read a novel where the place was so much the story, where I felt such a penetrating sense of place.
Lions is a small town in Colorado that is dying , deserted almost , with a population of not much over 100 , a town that never became the thriving place that its original settlers wanted it to be . The novel focuses on a handful people and what happens after a mysterious stranger comes to town. John Walker , the welder and his wife Georgianna, their son Gordon and his girlfriend Leigh and a few others who have stayed while most people have made the exodus from this desolate place with its abandoned beet sugar factory, gas station, storefronts and homes . It's also the story of people from the past - John's father and grandfather, and further back and the secret they pass down to their sons about going north for days at a time .
Is it a ghost story? Maybe. Nadzam sets the stage in the opening of the book , "If you've ever really loved anyone, you know there's a ghost in everything." Is it a love story ? Most certainly. There's Georgianna and John , May and Boyd , Gordon and Leigh. It's also about how people are shaped by their past , by the stories they tell about the past . It's about choices people make based on what they believe is the right thing for them, even though the odds are against them. It's certainly about so much more than I can express.
If you need resolution to the mysteries and answers to all the questions we are left with, this might not be for you, but you would be missing out on a beautifully written story .
Thanks to Grove Atlantic/Grove Press Black and NetGalley.
March 30, 2018
Set in what feels like a remote part of Colorado, this story tells of a small group of people who populate a dying town called Lions. The sugar beat factory that formerly sustained it closed down some years ago and the locals have taken to sticking up a sign near the highway to entice travellers to visit what they describe as a ghost town. It works, to an extent, but only enough to draw a few people off the road for an hour or so to grab a coffee or a meal at the diner or visit the bar for a quick beer. Once they’ve taken a look at this forlorn place they don’t hang around long.
There is a metalworking shop here too, run by a father and son team. They exist by completing small jobs but despite their excellent work and enviable reputation as craftsmen there’s little money to be made. The son, Gordon, is dating the only pretty girl in town and they dream of escaping Lions to go to college and seek a better future elsewhere. In fact, as time passes more and more people pack up their belongings and head off for pastures new. At this rate there will soon be nobody left! I found this aspect fascinating: it’s not something I can conceive of happening in England, which has half as much land but ten times as many people as the State of Colorado. Here, people don’t walk away in droves from their homes, leaving towns empty and abandoned. There’s just not enough liveable space.
Not much happens of consequence in this novel. Early on a stranger enters town with his dog and is looked after by Gordon’s family, but an unfortunate end soon befalls him. Later, Gordon is handed down a mysterious task from his father who is prone to disappearing ‘up north’ for periods but never discloses where he’s been or what he’s been up to. But even these two elements – seemingly the most significant in the story – are never really fully explored and in the end the reader is left to ruminate on their true significance.
On the up-side, the book is dripping in atmosphere, with some brilliantly descriptive passages. There are few laughs here but there are poignant moments and the characters we meet have depth and I began to care about them and their fate. The exception to this was Gordon. He’s a leading character and I wanted to understand what made him tick and to appreciate and have sympathy for the actions he took and the decisions he made. But for me he remained an enigma to the end.
There were sections in this book where I was tempted to abandon it and move on to something else; to go somewhere something happened. But I stuck with it, partly due to the quality of the writing – which is excellent – but also there remained a sense of mystery, a puzzle of sorts to be solved. And, in truth, the last third of the book did hook me in. But I feel there are messages here that I didn’t receive, that there’s an underlying purpose to the tale that passed me by. I don’t regret spending time with this book, its not a long read and there are aspects that I’m still thinking through. Maybe all will become clear to me… in time.
My thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
There is a metalworking shop here too, run by a father and son team. They exist by completing small jobs but despite their excellent work and enviable reputation as craftsmen there’s little money to be made. The son, Gordon, is dating the only pretty girl in town and they dream of escaping Lions to go to college and seek a better future elsewhere. In fact, as time passes more and more people pack up their belongings and head off for pastures new. At this rate there will soon be nobody left! I found this aspect fascinating: it’s not something I can conceive of happening in England, which has half as much land but ten times as many people as the State of Colorado. Here, people don’t walk away in droves from their homes, leaving towns empty and abandoned. There’s just not enough liveable space.
Not much happens of consequence in this novel. Early on a stranger enters town with his dog and is looked after by Gordon’s family, but an unfortunate end soon befalls him. Later, Gordon is handed down a mysterious task from his father who is prone to disappearing ‘up north’ for periods but never discloses where he’s been or what he’s been up to. But even these two elements – seemingly the most significant in the story – are never really fully explored and in the end the reader is left to ruminate on their true significance.
On the up-side, the book is dripping in atmosphere, with some brilliantly descriptive passages. There are few laughs here but there are poignant moments and the characters we meet have depth and I began to care about them and their fate. The exception to this was Gordon. He’s a leading character and I wanted to understand what made him tick and to appreciate and have sympathy for the actions he took and the decisions he made. But for me he remained an enigma to the end.
There were sections in this book where I was tempted to abandon it and move on to something else; to go somewhere something happened. But I stuck with it, partly due to the quality of the writing – which is excellent – but also there remained a sense of mystery, a puzzle of sorts to be solved. And, in truth, the last third of the book did hook me in. But I feel there are messages here that I didn’t receive, that there’s an underlying purpose to the tale that passed me by. I don’t regret spending time with this book, its not a long read and there are aspects that I’m still thinking through. Maybe all will become clear to me… in time.
My thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
June 19, 2016
Haunting, melancholy and bittersweet are the three words that I feel best describe this novel. It is always difficult to pinpoint exactly what makes a five star read, in this book for me it was the descriptions of this dying town and the atmosphere these descriptions created. I literally felt like I was living in this town with these people, mourning what was lost but refusing to give up, just hanging on and believing that what was here was better than what could be found elsewhere. Quite a feat for a writer to accomplish.
The characters and places in this town, The Walkers, a father and son who weld and get by on odd jobs, the local diner and bar, the emporium that sells used treasures and the one remaining gas station and Leigh who Gordon loves, friends and then high school sweethearts. Rich in lore, stories of tragedies past and a secret mission passed on from father and son. A stranger arrives and sets things in motion. Over the course of a summer only eleven would be left. Leigh is determined not to be one of them, she wants so much more than this town has to offer. There is so much here but it is not your typical plotted story, the plot os the town and what it means, past and present and even into the future.
This is not a book to read if you are a reader who like everything wrapped up nicely. I finished this book not knowing all the answers but I was okay with that. Life doesn't often provide answers to every question. I do know that this is a book I will reread, something I seldom do, because even though this is relatively short novel, it contains so much and I think there are more discoveries to be made. For me this novel was simply wonderful.
ARC from Netgalley.
The characters and places in this town, The Walkers, a father and son who weld and get by on odd jobs, the local diner and bar, the emporium that sells used treasures and the one remaining gas station and Leigh who Gordon loves, friends and then high school sweethearts. Rich in lore, stories of tragedies past and a secret mission passed on from father and son. A stranger arrives and sets things in motion. Over the course of a summer only eleven would be left. Leigh is determined not to be one of them, she wants so much more than this town has to offer. There is so much here but it is not your typical plotted story, the plot os the town and what it means, past and present and even into the future.
This is not a book to read if you are a reader who like everything wrapped up nicely. I finished this book not knowing all the answers but I was okay with that. Life doesn't often provide answers to every question. I do know that this is a book I will reread, something I seldom do, because even though this is relatively short novel, it contains so much and I think there are more discoveries to be made. For me this novel was simply wonderful.
ARC from Netgalley.
February 15, 2016
From start to finish this story captivates the imagination.... spooky-mysterious-
delicious storytelling!
The atmosphere throughout is intriguing, and unsettling.
Teenagers Leigh and Gordon are on the verge of 'young adulthood'. Their
narrative alone will keep you guessing and wondering how they might work their
ways toward ominous revelations.
Things happen in this town...people coming -- people going...
The characters - the cafe- the foods prepared in the cafe- the community - the strange things happening: ALL OF IT IS MEMORABLE!
The writing is GORGEOUS! ....
I may also be the only female reader that became obsessed with *welding*. Early in the story.. ( which has very little to do with the larger plot), there was something in the way in which the author described welding, that for the first time in my life, at age 63...
I became seriously interested in the entire process. I'm not talking about Jennifer Beal in the movie Flashdance either.
I was getting my husband involved ( poor guy), pestering him to teach me all he knew about welding. I watched utubes on brazing, soldering, then read about 'women-in the field. I have a new admiration for welders!!!!!!
Back to the story... To me... It has all the qualities I like best in fiction- starting with it's under 300 pages. I'm a fan of the shorter novels which pack in the big punches of compelling rigorous 'idea-driven'- emotionally engaging stories with characters that come alive... with genuine suspense. The ending left me slightly teary! It's an ending I'll think about for a long time.
I immediately bought another book to read by Bonnie Nadzam, "Lamb", as this is my first exposure to this author! I like her! She makes me think and feel--( equally)
"A Living Ghost Town", ( and welding)? This is such a terrific surprise!!!!... ( and not what it seems)! It's another one of those books BEST EXPERIENCED! -- my describing it just doesn't do it justice!
Thank you to Grove Atlantic, ( love this publishing company and am not ever shy to express it), Netgalley, and Bonnie Nadzam!!!
delicious storytelling!
The atmosphere throughout is intriguing, and unsettling.
Teenagers Leigh and Gordon are on the verge of 'young adulthood'. Their
narrative alone will keep you guessing and wondering how they might work their
ways toward ominous revelations.
Things happen in this town...people coming -- people going...
The characters - the cafe- the foods prepared in the cafe- the community - the strange things happening: ALL OF IT IS MEMORABLE!
The writing is GORGEOUS! ....
I may also be the only female reader that became obsessed with *welding*. Early in the story.. ( which has very little to do with the larger plot), there was something in the way in which the author described welding, that for the first time in my life, at age 63...
I became seriously interested in the entire process. I'm not talking about Jennifer Beal in the movie Flashdance either.
I was getting my husband involved ( poor guy), pestering him to teach me all he knew about welding. I watched utubes on brazing, soldering, then read about 'women-in the field. I have a new admiration for welders!!!!!!
Back to the story... To me... It has all the qualities I like best in fiction- starting with it's under 300 pages. I'm a fan of the shorter novels which pack in the big punches of compelling rigorous 'idea-driven'- emotionally engaging stories with characters that come alive... with genuine suspense. The ending left me slightly teary! It's an ending I'll think about for a long time.
I immediately bought another book to read by Bonnie Nadzam, "Lamb", as this is my first exposure to this author! I like her! She makes me think and feel--( equally)
"A Living Ghost Town", ( and welding)? This is such a terrific surprise!!!!... ( and not what it seems)! It's another one of those books BEST EXPERIENCED! -- my describing it just doesn't do it justice!
Thank you to Grove Atlantic, ( love this publishing company and am not ever shy to express it), Netgalley, and Bonnie Nadzam!!!
October 13, 2016
2.5 Stars
I seriously struggled with this one to the point of no return.
I know this is not going to be a popular rating but I will try to explain my reasons for such a low rating of a book that is loved by so many of my wonderful Good Read friends.
Lions is set on the high plains of Colorado, a nearly deserted place, steeped in local legends and sparse in population.When a traveling stranger appears one day, his unsettling presence sets off a chain reaction that will change the fates of everyone he encounters and accelerate the deterioration of Lions.
If I was rating this book on the prose and writing skill of the author I could certainly rate this as a 4 star read. The author paints wonderful images of people and places and there are some beautiful constructed sentences, but it was the plot that just didn't work for me. I never felt I understood the characters or even what was going on half the time and I found myself replaying many scenes to try to figure out what exactly was happening. I also struggled with identifying the timeline of the novel.
I was awaiting something that never happened and was left feeling disappointed on finishing the Novel.
I listened to this one on audible and the tone and pace of the narrator really didn't work for me , while the book is slow and haunting I just found the narration dreary and depressing and I dreaded listening to this before bedtime. I really do think if I have read this in hard copy I may have appreciated it more.
I agree with readers that the writing and prose is beautiful but I just couldn't connect with the story and therefore the reason for my rating.
I seriously struggled with this one to the point of no return.
I know this is not going to be a popular rating but I will try to explain my reasons for such a low rating of a book that is loved by so many of my wonderful Good Read friends.
Lions is set on the high plains of Colorado, a nearly deserted place, steeped in local legends and sparse in population.When a traveling stranger appears one day, his unsettling presence sets off a chain reaction that will change the fates of everyone he encounters and accelerate the deterioration of Lions.
If I was rating this book on the prose and writing skill of the author I could certainly rate this as a 4 star read. The author paints wonderful images of people and places and there are some beautiful constructed sentences, but it was the plot that just didn't work for me. I never felt I understood the characters or even what was going on half the time and I found myself replaying many scenes to try to figure out what exactly was happening. I also struggled with identifying the timeline of the novel.
I was awaiting something that never happened and was left feeling disappointed on finishing the Novel.
I listened to this one on audible and the tone and pace of the narrator really didn't work for me , while the book is slow and haunting I just found the narration dreary and depressing and I dreaded listening to this before bedtime. I really do think if I have read this in hard copy I may have appreciated it more.
I agree with readers that the writing and prose is beautiful but I just couldn't connect with the story and therefore the reason for my rating.
June 29, 2016
3.5 stars. Lions was beautifully written. It was full of atmosphere. The story had me fully engaged at the beginning, lost me in the middle and had me paying attention again towards the end. Lions is a dying town in Colorado. The book is more about the town than its individual inhabitants. The point of view drifts from one person to another, and drifts haphazardly through time. If there is a focus, it is on Leigh and Gordon – the two youngest members of the town who have vowed to leave Lions after they finish high school. But near the beginning, Gordon’s father dies and Gordon feels a pull to stay to fulfill a promise made to his father. Leigh feels a pull to leave, but extricating herself from Gordon – and from Lions – isn’t easy. The ebb and flow between Leigh and Gordon sets the rhythm of the story. The telling of the story floats somewhere above a sense of reality, which doesn’t always make it easy to know what’s happening. There is a tinge of magic or surrealism, and there are stories carried through the generations that may or may not be true. At times, I found Lions beautiful and at times I found it a bit tiresome. But there is no doubt that Bonnie Nadzam has real talent as a writer. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.
November 28, 2016
I so wanted to love this book. It fell short for me. Nadzam is a beautiful, beautiful writer. I was in awe of her images, her descriptions of the landscape and the hardscrabble dying town of Lions. She is lyrical without being indulgent or overly wordy, which I greatly appreciated. We wrote about basically the same region--mine set in the Oklahoma Panhandle, hers set just across the border in eastern Colorado--the High Plains, and although we set our books in different time periods, I felt a real kinship with Nadzam's project. She does a masterful job at creating these memorable characters, an oddball yet stoic bunch, the last people standing in Lions. I was willing to go with her in this book, even when it got a bit floaty and required suspension of disbelief. But there were times when I thought I had missed something because the story line became so opaque. For those of you who have read it, would Leigh really never ask Gordon about the task he inherited? And, honestly, I'm not sure I even got it by the end. There were issues around the plot that I had a hard time getting past. It's not a plot-heavy book, of course, but I needed more grounding.
I'll buy whatever Nadzam is selling though. She's super talented, and I look forward to reading her first novel and whatever comes next.
I'll buy whatever Nadzam is selling though. She's super talented, and I look forward to reading her first novel and whatever comes next.
October 15, 2016
This novel should have been in my wheelhouse. Its setting is eastern Colorado where I grew up; and, I was hoping for elements that would resonate with me. Unfortunately, that didn't happen and I'm moving on...
July 26, 2016
I'd rate this 4.5 stars.
The small town of Lions, Colorado was envisioned to be a grand city, but it never amounted to much. Farming, mining, really nothing succeeded in Lions, and apart from a few small businesses—a diner, a bar, a thrift shop—little by little, the town is dying.
"There was no future in Lions. No matter how many stories you heard about years gone by, no matter how many plans you had stocked up for the future, you were confined to a never-ending present."
The Walker family has lived in Lions for several generations. John Walker is a talented welder who could easily have made quite a living if he and his family moved to Denver or another metropolis, but instead chose to keep his family's welding shop open despite the fact that there was barely any business to be had, and when there was, he usually undercharged his neighbors or let them pay for it in kind. Those left in the town never understood why he did the things he did, and although they thought he was a fine, upstanding man, they somehow saw his refusal to better his life as a character flaw.<
"They never could understand John Walker or what seemed to be his lifetime of poor decision making. The backward code he seemed to live and work by—his entrepreneurial failure somehow as perpetual as it was absolute. It was as if each of the Walkers in his time was choosing again and again, every morning in his workshirt with his first cup of coffee, to fail."
One night, a mysterious man and his dog show up in town. He speaks very little, but the Walkers show him tremendous charity, providing him and his dog food, new clothes, even money. When the man visits the town bar, and tempers among the citizens of Lions flare for no reason, the man's appearance sets a chain of events in motion which leads to John Walker suddenly dying of a heart attack, among other things. But before John dies, he asks his teenage son, Gordon, to promise to continue a mysterious errand which generations of Walker men have handled, according to legend.
The death of his father and his mother's grief completely unravel Gordon, who in a short number of weeks was scheduled to leave town with his girlfriend Leigh, whom he has known since they were children, and go to college. Leigh dreams of nothing more than leaving Lions for good and having a life larger than she ever thought possible. She cannot understand why Gordon is suddenly having second thoughts, why anyone would want to stay in a town which is shedding people like a dog sheds its fur, when they have the chance to embrace so much possibility and potential.
Lions is a beautifully drawn portrait of life in a dying small town, and the people who call it home. The book is a little bit allegorical and a little bit mysterious, but it is really well-written and compelling. You could feel the tension these people had between staying where they've lived for most, if not all, of their lives, and the need to go to a more vibrant place. The characters were really well-drawn, and although Leigh seemed like a bit of a spoiled brat, you could understand her point of view as well.
I'd never read anything Bonnie Nadzam has written before, but I was really captivated by her storytelling ability. This is a book which seems simple on its surface, but is really a much more complex and moving story than I expected. Really well done.
See all of my reviews at http://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blo....
The small town of Lions, Colorado was envisioned to be a grand city, but it never amounted to much. Farming, mining, really nothing succeeded in Lions, and apart from a few small businesses—a diner, a bar, a thrift shop—little by little, the town is dying.
"There was no future in Lions. No matter how many stories you heard about years gone by, no matter how many plans you had stocked up for the future, you were confined to a never-ending present."
The Walker family has lived in Lions for several generations. John Walker is a talented welder who could easily have made quite a living if he and his family moved to Denver or another metropolis, but instead chose to keep his family's welding shop open despite the fact that there was barely any business to be had, and when there was, he usually undercharged his neighbors or let them pay for it in kind. Those left in the town never understood why he did the things he did, and although they thought he was a fine, upstanding man, they somehow saw his refusal to better his life as a character flaw.<
"They never could understand John Walker or what seemed to be his lifetime of poor decision making. The backward code he seemed to live and work by—his entrepreneurial failure somehow as perpetual as it was absolute. It was as if each of the Walkers in his time was choosing again and again, every morning in his workshirt with his first cup of coffee, to fail."
One night, a mysterious man and his dog show up in town. He speaks very little, but the Walkers show him tremendous charity, providing him and his dog food, new clothes, even money. When the man visits the town bar, and tempers among the citizens of Lions flare for no reason, the man's appearance sets a chain of events in motion which leads to John Walker suddenly dying of a heart attack, among other things. But before John dies, he asks his teenage son, Gordon, to promise to continue a mysterious errand which generations of Walker men have handled, according to legend.
The death of his father and his mother's grief completely unravel Gordon, who in a short number of weeks was scheduled to leave town with his girlfriend Leigh, whom he has known since they were children, and go to college. Leigh dreams of nothing more than leaving Lions for good and having a life larger than she ever thought possible. She cannot understand why Gordon is suddenly having second thoughts, why anyone would want to stay in a town which is shedding people like a dog sheds its fur, when they have the chance to embrace so much possibility and potential.
Lions is a beautifully drawn portrait of life in a dying small town, and the people who call it home. The book is a little bit allegorical and a little bit mysterious, but it is really well-written and compelling. You could feel the tension these people had between staying where they've lived for most, if not all, of their lives, and the need to go to a more vibrant place. The characters were really well-drawn, and although Leigh seemed like a bit of a spoiled brat, you could understand her point of view as well.
I'd never read anything Bonnie Nadzam has written before, but I was really captivated by her storytelling ability. This is a book which seems simple on its surface, but is really a much more complex and moving story than I expected. Really well done.
See all of my reviews at http://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blo....
August 26, 2016
4★
Evocatively written story of warm-hearted people in a bleak setting. Loyal to a fault, one might say. Loyal to a wide-spot-in-the-road town in an unforgiving landscape. The kind of place you’d drive straight through unless you needed fuel, but you’ll have to be quick--the garage is about to go out of business.
I think indigenous cultures developed in areas where people could eat and find shelter. They moved around within their home territories as the seasons dictated. “Colonists” always seem to know better. Raze, crop, sell. Progress!
Settlers originally moved to Lions, Colorado, to establish a thriving agricultural hub, but instead, we meet the last few families stubbornly enduring harsh winters and scorching summers, in spite of years of failed crops.
“Where once there had been wild onions and yams, buffalo . . . streams of fish . . . Their mistake was not in failing to see how difficult it would be to turn this place into a garden, but in failing to see that it had already been one when they arrived.”
Broken hearts, broken people.
“Nothing like raising crops on the high plains, Jorgensen used to say, for the spiritual workout of reconciling what you’d expected with what you ended up getting. The place was uninhabitable, too hard, too dusty, too dry, too poor, out of jobs, out of prospects. The wonder was that they had all stayed so long.”
A man says of church-goers: “Seems their belief grows in proportion to their disappointment, which gets sharper all the time. I will never understand it.” [Nor do I.]
Like many small farm towns around the world, social life revolves around food and occasions. May and Boyd own both the bar and the diner across the road, where people congregate. May thaws stacks of frozen lunchmeat for the white bread sandwiches she serves in the diner, and people seem to be stopping in all the time for pie and coffee and countless hot breakfasts. Not sure where the money comes from.
(The continual breakfast sizzles made me so hungry that we had bacon and eggs and hash browns one night for dinner when I was reading.)
One day, a stranger wanders into town with his dog, and their fate makes Lions a “ghost town”, which brings a welcome influx of tourists for a while.
May and Boyd’s daughter, Leigh, is saving up to escape to college, and she’s trying to convince her beau, Gordon Walker, to come with her. Their relationship is central to the book. Stay or go? They meet regularly to picnic in an abandoned sugar beet factory (progress gone bad), which is featured on the cover of the book. (It reminds me of the factory in Richard Russo’s Empire Falls.)
The Walkers are welders who can fix, build, invent, adapt almost anything, (and often don’t charge for it, so everyone loves them). Old equipment needs constant repairs.
A passing trucker in the diner says to Gordon, “Welding’s good work . . . Just don’t get stuck here doing it.”
But Gordon idolises his dad, a perfectionist (an artist, really) who tells him to inspect every weld with extreme care.
“ ‘You’re not operating from a belief system, Gordon,’ he said. ‘You’re working with successive approximations of facts. Work with what you know. And what you don’t know, don’t guess.’ “
Gordon’s grandfather used to disappear mysteriously for days into the north woods, taking “supplies” somewhere (to someone?), and now his father does it. We don’t know why, but Gordon and his mother accept it as necessary.
When Leigh keeps pressuring Gordon to come to college with her, he begins to pull away, as if there’s something physically tying him to Lions. His responsibility to be ready to go north, like his father, on whatever the mission is for the Walker men?
Loyal to a fault?
I loved the writing. Felt left a bit up in the air at the end, but I can’t fault the sense of the place and the people.
Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the review copy from which I've quoted. Lovely book.
Evocatively written story of warm-hearted people in a bleak setting. Loyal to a fault, one might say. Loyal to a wide-spot-in-the-road town in an unforgiving landscape. The kind of place you’d drive straight through unless you needed fuel, but you’ll have to be quick--the garage is about to go out of business.
I think indigenous cultures developed in areas where people could eat and find shelter. They moved around within their home territories as the seasons dictated. “Colonists” always seem to know better. Raze, crop, sell. Progress!
Settlers originally moved to Lions, Colorado, to establish a thriving agricultural hub, but instead, we meet the last few families stubbornly enduring harsh winters and scorching summers, in spite of years of failed crops.
“Where once there had been wild onions and yams, buffalo . . . streams of fish . . . Their mistake was not in failing to see how difficult it would be to turn this place into a garden, but in failing to see that it had already been one when they arrived.”
Broken hearts, broken people.
“Nothing like raising crops on the high plains, Jorgensen used to say, for the spiritual workout of reconciling what you’d expected with what you ended up getting. The place was uninhabitable, too hard, too dusty, too dry, too poor, out of jobs, out of prospects. The wonder was that they had all stayed so long.”
A man says of church-goers: “Seems their belief grows in proportion to their disappointment, which gets sharper all the time. I will never understand it.” [Nor do I.]
Like many small farm towns around the world, social life revolves around food and occasions. May and Boyd own both the bar and the diner across the road, where people congregate. May thaws stacks of frozen lunchmeat for the white bread sandwiches she serves in the diner, and people seem to be stopping in all the time for pie and coffee and countless hot breakfasts. Not sure where the money comes from.
(The continual breakfast sizzles made me so hungry that we had bacon and eggs and hash browns one night for dinner when I was reading.)
One day, a stranger wanders into town with his dog, and their fate makes Lions a “ghost town”, which brings a welcome influx of tourists for a while.
May and Boyd’s daughter, Leigh, is saving up to escape to college, and she’s trying to convince her beau, Gordon Walker, to come with her. Their relationship is central to the book. Stay or go? They meet regularly to picnic in an abandoned sugar beet factory (progress gone bad), which is featured on the cover of the book. (It reminds me of the factory in Richard Russo’s Empire Falls.)
The Walkers are welders who can fix, build, invent, adapt almost anything, (and often don’t charge for it, so everyone loves them). Old equipment needs constant repairs.
A passing trucker in the diner says to Gordon, “Welding’s good work . . . Just don’t get stuck here doing it.”
But Gordon idolises his dad, a perfectionist (an artist, really) who tells him to inspect every weld with extreme care.
“ ‘You’re not operating from a belief system, Gordon,’ he said. ‘You’re working with successive approximations of facts. Work with what you know. And what you don’t know, don’t guess.’ “
Gordon’s grandfather used to disappear mysteriously for days into the north woods, taking “supplies” somewhere (to someone?), and now his father does it. We don’t know why, but Gordon and his mother accept it as necessary.
When Leigh keeps pressuring Gordon to come to college with her, he begins to pull away, as if there’s something physically tying him to Lions. His responsibility to be ready to go north, like his father, on whatever the mission is for the Walker men?
Loyal to a fault?
I loved the writing. Felt left a bit up in the air at the end, but I can’t fault the sense of the place and the people.
Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the review copy from which I've quoted. Lovely book.
February 20, 2017
If I were to rate this book solely on the writing, it might have been five stars. Nadzam’s words, her cadence, sentence structures, and uniquely vivid imagery combine to form a stirring prose. She very effectively conveys that feeling of desolation and abandonment, setting me down there on the dusty main street of Lions between the bar and diner. The writing is definitely what I enjoyed most about Lions.
Having said that, I also have this feeling as if I've arrived at the party but can't quite figure out what is being celebrated. I might be the odd one out on this, but I struggled to extract anything of significance from the story itself. Overall, it has a very ethereal feel and there is talk of ghosts and legends of men living hundreds of years and never growing old -– this held promise for me in the beginning, that’s pretty cool stuff. Unfortunately, those elements wound up becoming too disjoint for my tastes and even, in some cases, too flimsy to support some of the characters' actions. The ending is left open to interpretation, which I can appreciate, I just couldn’t follow the path to that ending.
This book will appeal to a lot of people and I don’t want my review to cause someone to take a pass on it. The writing alone made it worth the read. Perhaps I’m simply not that adept at interpreting what seems like a great deal of symbolism in order to find the weight and meaning behind it. Couldn’t figure out what this author was trying to say.
Having said that, I also have this feeling as if I've arrived at the party but can't quite figure out what is being celebrated. I might be the odd one out on this, but I struggled to extract anything of significance from the story itself. Overall, it has a very ethereal feel and there is talk of ghosts and legends of men living hundreds of years and never growing old -– this held promise for me in the beginning, that’s pretty cool stuff. Unfortunately, those elements wound up becoming too disjoint for my tastes and even, in some cases, too flimsy to support some of the characters' actions. The ending is left open to interpretation, which I can appreciate, I just couldn’t follow the path to that ending.
This book will appeal to a lot of people and I don’t want my review to cause someone to take a pass on it. The writing alone made it worth the read. Perhaps I’m simply not that adept at interpreting what seems like a great deal of symbolism in order to find the weight and meaning behind it. Couldn’t figure out what this author was trying to say.
August 6, 2016
I know I'm in the minority on this one, but gotta tell it like I saw it. I made some notes on my thoughts during the first half....
Weird book. Writing that alternates between strange and an attempt at experimental or the unconventional. Meandering. No chapter breaks (maybe they'll come with the final edit). A proliferation of sentence fragments. At times, nonsensical.
This was an odd experience for me. Many of my friends gave it 5 stars, so what am I missing? I didn't find interesting the dying town of Lions, it's inhabitants, or the writing style.
The second half picked up a bit but still not enough to redeem it in my eyes. A thank you to NetGalley and the publisher.
Weird book. Writing that alternates between strange and an attempt at experimental or the unconventional. Meandering. No chapter breaks (maybe they'll come with the final edit). A proliferation of sentence fragments. At times, nonsensical.
This was an odd experience for me. Many of my friends gave it 5 stars, so what am I missing? I didn't find interesting the dying town of Lions, it's inhabitants, or the writing style.
The second half picked up a bit but still not enough to redeem it in my eyes. A thank you to NetGalley and the publisher.
June 18, 2018
Wow, so that cover is spot on. Perhaps the most atmospheric book I’ve read, the town of Lions is so well-described that it is the main character of this bleak, depressing story. This book was a bit of an enigma, with its beautifully drawn atmosphere but with a confusing timeline and flat characters. I suspect I would have better appreciated (and perhaps better understood) this had I read it rather than listened to it, though the narrator was appropriated depressing. 3 stars
Note to self: No more fiction on audio! Is there an echo in here?!
Note to self: No more fiction on audio! Is there an echo in here?!
June 26, 2016
“If you’ve ever really loved anyone, you know there’s a ghost in everything. Once you see it, you see it everywhere. It looks out at you from the stillness of a rail-backed chair. From the old 1952 Massey-Harris Pony tractor out front, its once shining red metal now a rust-splotched pink, headlights broken off. No eyes.”
Lions is a run-down, small spot on the map in Colorado, up in the high plains where the sun scorches in summer and the winds howl with little to restrain them. Little to bend or disrupt their path. The hundred or so souls who reside here, most of them grew up here, some who lived here have moved on, moved away. The pace of life gives new meaning to the word “slow.” Most of what was once a town has dried up, blown away. The youth of this town (all two of them), no surprise, live for the day they can leave, with hopes to never return. Certainly to live their lives where there’s hope of a decent job, with a decent wage, a nice, if simple house, and all the conveniences of Wal-Mart. Far from deserted factories, abandoned gas stations, a place where dreams are fulfilled, not dashed.
Maybe you’ve driven through such a town, or perhaps stayed there a night or two. Maybe even lived in a place like that. For some, it’s the noise and rush-rush of the big cities that drives them to madness, for others it’s the endless sound of sameness. The endless howl of the wind. The same conversations, the same people at the same diner.
John Walker, his wife Georgiana have lived and loved their life in Lions, their son Gordon has also lived there all his life. He thinks he knows what he wants with the rest of his life, Leigh. They’ve made their plans, college together, then life in Anyplace-But-Lions, but plans sometimes change. Life has a way of putting detours in our well-planned routes.
Misunderstandings. Pride. Jealousy. And, of course, there’s love. And secrets, of course, and things about these people we could never fully understand. How the lives we all live shape our future, how our past brought us to where and who we are today. How even those tiny detours can create such havoc, but at the end of the road, we can’t imagine getting to where we are any other way.
The writing is lovely, the settings and emotions flow perfectly as the days go by. The atmosphere of this forgotten town is so tangible that you will feel the dust on your skin as you wander through your time visiting Lions.
Pub Date: 5 July 2016
Many thanks to Grove Atlantic, NetGalley, and to author Bonnie Nadzam for providing me with an advanced copy for reading and review
December 31, 2018
Beautifully written, Lions by Bonnie Nadzam, takes place in a modern ghost town populated by just over 100 people on the high plains of Colorado.
It is a story about family, friends, living in a town most have left due to persistent drought.
The townspeople love their stories which are something to help them through the rough times.
When a travelling stranger and his dog appear one day his unsettling presence sets off a chain reaction that will change the fates of everyone he encounters.
This haunting book gave me some of the answers about why people choose to remain in such places and how a desolate town without hope for the future can feel like home.
It is a story about family, friends, living in a town most have left due to persistent drought.
The townspeople love their stories which are something to help them through the rough times.
When a travelling stranger and his dog appear one day his unsettling presence sets off a chain reaction that will change the fates of everyone he encounters.
This haunting book gave me some of the answers about why people choose to remain in such places and how a desolate town without hope for the future can feel like home.
May 12, 2016
If you've ever driven I-80 through Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and skirted the border of Colorado heading into Nebraska, you've doubtless passed through a town just like Lions. You've probably said to yourself, just like I have many times, "who the hell lives here, and why?" Dust and sage and sadness seem to permeate these places, at least on first look. Lions, Colorado was named by its founders based on their optimism about its potential, a community that had convinced itself that they had landed somewhere that they could better themselves and make their place in the world. But in the hundred and whatever years since its founding Lions has never lived up to the dreams of its inhabitants, and we join its story with the town in its death throes as its last remaining inhabitants appear to be eking out an unfulfilling modern day existence.
John Walker is a welder and not coincidentally the man who is holding what's left of the town together. His skill with a welder is legendary and people in town say that he could have earned six figures if he'd have just left town for the cities where there is industry in need of his skills. John seems oblivious to this. He's a man who takes his satisfaction in whatever project he's taken on and is not motivated by money as much as he is by the mastering of his craft. He is also prone to disappearing for several days at a time, a mission of sorts that fulfills some commitment the Walker men have taken on for several generations. They don't talk about it with others, not even their wives, leaving the townsfolk to speculate and a curious legend to grow.
There are only two young people in town and they are in love. John's son Gordon Walker and the beautiful Leigh who lives in a home just 100 feet away. As one would imagine, they've spent their youth dreaming of leaving Lions. They want to go to college, better themselves, live in a city and experience the things that real life has to offer, the things they feel they've been missing all along and they've planned to do all of this together. It is the summer before they are to leave that a stranger and his dog walk into town and set in motion Nadzam's beautiful and haunting tale.
In her novel Mr Splitfoot, Samantha Hunt wrote that "every story is a ghost story" and this maxim holds true in Lions. This is a novel in many ways about the weighing of an uncertain future against the respect for the ghosts of one's past. More importantly though, it beautifully addresses the old existential question: can one find meaning in a cold and unfeeling universe? And when one does, what happens if that meaning is at odds with the currently accepted pathway to happiness? These questions are taken up mainly through the Walker men and the impatient Leigh and Nadzam masterfully guides the story that is, at least in some sense, also a wonderfully written debate.
I said Lions is haunting. This is so because the reader can't spend time in the novel without conjuring the spirits that walk the desert of his or her own past. Nadzam's writing evokes a dream like feel as she presents the actors on the stage that is that tiny town, and with a delicate thread of existential anxiety she stitches the squares of their lives together. You know that Lions is a part of our modern world, but you sense that somehow they exist in their own dimension, and this provides a unique and ultimately satisfying reading experience. Lions, Colorado is a fictional town, but I assure you I've driven through it many times. The next time I do, I'll have a smile on my face, wondering if there aren't some people there who have the important questions all figured out.
John Walker is a welder and not coincidentally the man who is holding what's left of the town together. His skill with a welder is legendary and people in town say that he could have earned six figures if he'd have just left town for the cities where there is industry in need of his skills. John seems oblivious to this. He's a man who takes his satisfaction in whatever project he's taken on and is not motivated by money as much as he is by the mastering of his craft. He is also prone to disappearing for several days at a time, a mission of sorts that fulfills some commitment the Walker men have taken on for several generations. They don't talk about it with others, not even their wives, leaving the townsfolk to speculate and a curious legend to grow.
There are only two young people in town and they are in love. John's son Gordon Walker and the beautiful Leigh who lives in a home just 100 feet away. As one would imagine, they've spent their youth dreaming of leaving Lions. They want to go to college, better themselves, live in a city and experience the things that real life has to offer, the things they feel they've been missing all along and they've planned to do all of this together. It is the summer before they are to leave that a stranger and his dog walk into town and set in motion Nadzam's beautiful and haunting tale.
In her novel Mr Splitfoot, Samantha Hunt wrote that "every story is a ghost story" and this maxim holds true in Lions. This is a novel in many ways about the weighing of an uncertain future against the respect for the ghosts of one's past. More importantly though, it beautifully addresses the old existential question: can one find meaning in a cold and unfeeling universe? And when one does, what happens if that meaning is at odds with the currently accepted pathway to happiness? These questions are taken up mainly through the Walker men and the impatient Leigh and Nadzam masterfully guides the story that is, at least in some sense, also a wonderfully written debate.
I said Lions is haunting. This is so because the reader can't spend time in the novel without conjuring the spirits that walk the desert of his or her own past. Nadzam's writing evokes a dream like feel as she presents the actors on the stage that is that tiny town, and with a delicate thread of existential anxiety she stitches the squares of their lives together. You know that Lions is a part of our modern world, but you sense that somehow they exist in their own dimension, and this provides a unique and ultimately satisfying reading experience. Lions, Colorado is a fictional town, but I assure you I've driven through it many times. The next time I do, I'll have a smile on my face, wondering if there aren't some people there who have the important questions all figured out.
February 5, 2017
"The place was uninhabitable. Too hard, too dusty, too dry, too poor, out of jobs, out of prospects. The wonder was that they had all stayed so long. For years, like a slowly lifting line of birds, there'd been a slow but steady flight out of town. Finally, inside this single summer, all but eleven people would go. One at a time, in the old brick stores and painted houses the windows were boarded or punched out with stones, eyes blind to a place that so many years ago shed so much blood to claim."
With stunning prose Bonnie Nadzam tells the tale of the dying town of Lions, CO. While there is a central plot in this book, for me the true enjoyment is experienced in the characters and atmosphere. There's a melancholy that runs throughout the book, as the reader shares the sense of loss and fear with the characters in this book who have no choice but to pack up and move on from the place they once knew.
"Lions" had a particular poignancy for me as I reflected on the economic changes currently underway in the U.S.
Highly recommended. 5 stars
Thank you to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for a galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.
With stunning prose Bonnie Nadzam tells the tale of the dying town of Lions, CO. While there is a central plot in this book, for me the true enjoyment is experienced in the characters and atmosphere. There's a melancholy that runs throughout the book, as the reader shares the sense of loss and fear with the characters in this book who have no choice but to pack up and move on from the place they once knew.
"Lions" had a particular poignancy for me as I reflected on the economic changes currently underway in the U.S.
Highly recommended. 5 stars
Thank you to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for a galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.
July 5, 2016
Place (the tiny dying ghost-town of Lions) is paramount to this story. In fact, it's the dominant character in the book. It's haunting (some might say haunted), inhospitable and almost uninhabitable. But it also has a vice grip on its few inhabitants.
While reading this, I thought about the American Dream, and this book seemed to be a rejection of that. A full on rejection of finding happiness through "success" in a conventional manner (education, money, family, living in a beautiful and prosperous place with a multitude of choices). The characters in this book who actually choose to live in Lions with its dearth of life and ease and colour *could* be seen as enlightened. They don't need or want the frivolities of city life to be happy. They are happy with their can of peaches in an old recliner, and a battered cowboy paperback. They have it all figured out. My problem with this is, true enlightenment would manifest happiness found anywhere. The people of Lions have a very specific dot on the planet in which they feel comfortable.
I make better sense of this novel if I look at it as a ghost story... in which people behave in mysterious ways with a wan gauntness that defies logic. Man did I ever feel badly for Leigh, who was judged so harshly by her family and friends for wanting a normal life! And Gordon, he annoyed the snot out of me with his monosyllabic ways, his absences that were seen as not only totally acceptable by those around him, but as pious pilgrimages.
That all said, this book was written so beautifully. I enjoyed it for the incredible writing and for the barren atmosphere which was swirled around so masterfully by Bonnie Nazdam.
I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, Grove Atlantic!
While reading this, I thought about the American Dream, and this book seemed to be a rejection of that. A full on rejection of finding happiness through "success" in a conventional manner (education, money, family, living in a beautiful and prosperous place with a multitude of choices). The characters in this book who actually choose to live in Lions with its dearth of life and ease and colour *could* be seen as enlightened. They don't need or want the frivolities of city life to be happy. They are happy with their can of peaches in an old recliner, and a battered cowboy paperback. They have it all figured out. My problem with this is, true enlightenment would manifest happiness found anywhere. The people of Lions have a very specific dot on the planet in which they feel comfortable.
I make better sense of this novel if I look at it as a ghost story... in which people behave in mysterious ways with a wan gauntness that defies logic. Man did I ever feel badly for Leigh, who was judged so harshly by her family and friends for wanting a normal life! And Gordon, he annoyed the snot out of me with his monosyllabic ways, his absences that were seen as not only totally acceptable by those around him, but as pious pilgrimages.
That all said, this book was written so beautifully. I enjoyed it for the incredible writing and for the barren atmosphere which was swirled around so masterfully by Bonnie Nazdam.
I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, Grove Atlantic!
March 31, 2017
Che lettura incredibile! Preso quasi a caso, attirata dalla copertina e da questa nuova casa editrice (blackcoffee) alla fine mi è piaciuto veramente molto. Wow.
Prima cosa che voglio dire: leggetelo, non è molto pubblicizzato e distribuito nelle librerie (purtroppo) ma dovete procurarvelo lo stesso.
Di cosa parla questo libro? Non ha un vero e proprio "senso" perché non è una lettura lineare, con un inizio e una fine..è una storia circolare, è atmosfera, poesia, persone e sentimenti, scelte...e che stile, che bravura questa autrice! Non lo avrei amato così tanto se non fosse scritto così DIVINAMENTE...presente Emma Cline? Ecco, ancora meglio.
Il protagonista del libro è Lions, che piano piano sta diventando una città fantasma, e due ragazzi , Gordon e Leight, che si trovano davanti alla scelta se partire o rimanere e al peso che le scelte comportano. Questa storia è soffocante, misteriosa, profetica, non da risposte ma pone domande, è il prodotto di un'autrice con un incredibile talento, che merita di essere conosciuto.
Prima cosa che voglio dire: leggetelo, non è molto pubblicizzato e distribuito nelle librerie (purtroppo) ma dovete procurarvelo lo stesso.
Di cosa parla questo libro? Non ha un vero e proprio "senso" perché non è una lettura lineare, con un inizio e una fine..è una storia circolare, è atmosfera, poesia, persone e sentimenti, scelte...e che stile, che bravura questa autrice! Non lo avrei amato così tanto se non fosse scritto così DIVINAMENTE...presente Emma Cline? Ecco, ancora meglio.
Il protagonista del libro è Lions, che piano piano sta diventando una città fantasma, e due ragazzi , Gordon e Leight, che si trovano davanti alla scelta se partire o rimanere e al peso che le scelte comportano. Questa storia è soffocante, misteriosa, profetica, non da risposte ma pone domande, è il prodotto di un'autrice con un incredibile talento, che merita di essere conosciuto.
September 20, 2016
“People say they want the truth but they don’t. They want a story.” So says one of the characters in Bonnie Nadzam’s Lions. The stories they want are easily woven in the Colorado town of Lions, a ghost town where only 117 people remain. Among them are Gordon, the son of a welder, and his girlfriend Leigh, a waitress who is looking ahead toward greener pastures.
The book is aptly named because Lions is bigger than any of the characters and its pull and lure shape those that remain. Bonnie Nadzam masterfully conjures up a town on the edge of desperation, where “for sale” signs dot the landscape and inhabitants yearn to “move up” to nearby Burnsville, with its Taco Bells and Motel 6s. There is almost a mythic quality to the twon: “It gave one the sense of a mirror hung somehow, somewhere…the way heat could double and distort the inventory of the town, make the air in the distance shine and buckle and reflect little houses hung upside down in the vacant blue.”
There are folkloric tales about a stranger who arrived in town and ended up floating dead in the water tower and of a teacher who dismissed her class early during a raging blizzard to rendezvous with her lover. We get bits and pieces of the characters’ lives – some real, some perceived. Ms. Nadzam suggests that all are ghosts: those who made up the fabric of the town and those who subsist in it still.
As Bonnie Nadzam zeroes in on her key characters – Leigh and Gordon – we see, close up and personal, the effects of Lions on two of its remaining citizens. The need to get away is strong but the pull of Lions might be stronger. It’s a very nuanced look at young people on the verge of a new life who must deal with the old life and it’s also a surprisingly effective exploration of grief. I’m amazed that Lions has not had more buzz. It is very good and should be more widely known.
July 31, 2018
«Ogni storia d'amore è una storia di fantasmi.»
Se esiste un posto al mondo dove i fantasmi e il presente convivono nell'abbacinante luce degli altipiani, nella polvere rossa del deserto, nell'antico cigolare di vecchi carri che l'attraversano per andare nel west, di pick-up sbiaditi dal sole, di insegne di vecchie stazioni di servizio, di enormi cisterne di zuccherifici in disuso, di cartelli che indicano che anch'essa è proprio una città fantasma; se c'è un posto al mondo in cui questo è possibile, dove i destini passati, presenti e futuri come quelli dei diciassettenni Leigh e Gordon, messi di fronte al bivio della vita che gli chiede contemporaneamente di andare e restare, di amarsi per sempre o separarsi, si incrociano e si mescolano alle leggende dei pionieri e alle carovane, quello è Lions.
Opera seconda di Bonnie Hadzam e prima pubblicazione della neonata (da una costola della Clichy Edizioni, che già aveva pubblicato Lamb, romanzo di esordio dell'autrice statunitense) Black Coffee*, Lions si inserisce come un incastro perfetto in un quadro di letteratura americana contemporanea che ripartendo dalle radici proprie delle popolazioni degli altipiani (quelli in tempi recentissimi resi celebri dalla Trilogia di Holt di Kent Haruf, ma anche dai romanzi della striscia di frontiera raccontata ne Il fabbricante di eco da Richard Powers o, muovendo più a Est, da Philipp Meyer, il cui rimando a Ruggine americana è quasi immediato) e dalle loro storie tramandate nel tempo, muove i passi fino alla realtà attuale, spesso in crisi di identità, in cui l'esodo dai piccoli centri rurali, il fallimento delle grandi industrie - qui lo zuccherificio, in Ruggine Americana le acciaierie - amplifica il vuoto, la desolazione, la mancanza di futuro in luoghi geografici che diventano spettrali anche quando, di giorno, sono investiti dalla luce viva.
È brava, Bonnie Nadzam, che riesce a filtrare e poi fondere fra loro, in un'unica storia, le tracce e i presagi del passato con la realtà del presente, a strappare di continuo il lettore alla visione di una veglia che non riesce mai ad abbandonarsi del tutto al sogno, a creare un equilibrio, infine, in cui i fantasmi del passato e quelli del presente si uniscono per camminare gli uni al fianco degli altri.
*”Black Coffee è un progetto dedicato alla letteratura nordamericana contemporanea. Pubblichiamo autori esordienti, voci fuori dal coro e opere inedite ingiustamente dimenticate, con particolare attenzione al racconto.”
Che poi il sito di Black Coffe mi piace un sacco: a ogni autore, a ogni libro, corrispondono dei “percorsi” da seguire attraverso link che portano ad articoli o racconti tutti da scoprire.
E poi fra gli amici c’è The Believer, e allora… è un segno del destino, Dave Eggers e io siamo proprio due anime gemelle.
«Se avete mai amato davvero qualcuno, saprete che c’è un fantasma in ogni cosa.»
Se esiste un posto al mondo dove i fantasmi e il presente convivono nell'abbacinante luce degli altipiani, nella polvere rossa del deserto, nell'antico cigolare di vecchi carri che l'attraversano per andare nel west, di pick-up sbiaditi dal sole, di insegne di vecchie stazioni di servizio, di enormi cisterne di zuccherifici in disuso, di cartelli che indicano che anch'essa è proprio una città fantasma; se c'è un posto al mondo in cui questo è possibile, dove i destini passati, presenti e futuri come quelli dei diciassettenni Leigh e Gordon, messi di fronte al bivio della vita che gli chiede contemporaneamente di andare e restare, di amarsi per sempre o separarsi, si incrociano e si mescolano alle leggende dei pionieri e alle carovane, quello è Lions.
Opera seconda di Bonnie Hadzam e prima pubblicazione della neonata (da una costola della Clichy Edizioni, che già aveva pubblicato Lamb, romanzo di esordio dell'autrice statunitense) Black Coffee*, Lions si inserisce come un incastro perfetto in un quadro di letteratura americana contemporanea che ripartendo dalle radici proprie delle popolazioni degli altipiani (quelli in tempi recentissimi resi celebri dalla Trilogia di Holt di Kent Haruf, ma anche dai romanzi della striscia di frontiera raccontata ne Il fabbricante di eco da Richard Powers o, muovendo più a Est, da Philipp Meyer, il cui rimando a Ruggine americana è quasi immediato) e dalle loro storie tramandate nel tempo, muove i passi fino alla realtà attuale, spesso in crisi di identità, in cui l'esodo dai piccoli centri rurali, il fallimento delle grandi industrie - qui lo zuccherificio, in Ruggine Americana le acciaierie - amplifica il vuoto, la desolazione, la mancanza di futuro in luoghi geografici che diventano spettrali anche quando, di giorno, sono investiti dalla luce viva.
È brava, Bonnie Nadzam, che riesce a filtrare e poi fondere fra loro, in un'unica storia, le tracce e i presagi del passato con la realtà del presente, a strappare di continuo il lettore alla visione di una veglia che non riesce mai ad abbandonarsi del tutto al sogno, a creare un equilibrio, infine, in cui i fantasmi del passato e quelli del presente si uniscono per camminare gli uni al fianco degli altri.
*”Black Coffee è un progetto dedicato alla letteratura nordamericana contemporanea. Pubblichiamo autori esordienti, voci fuori dal coro e opere inedite ingiustamente dimenticate, con particolare attenzione al racconto.”
Che poi il sito di Black Coffe mi piace un sacco: a ogni autore, a ogni libro, corrispondono dei “percorsi” da seguire attraverso link che portano ad articoli o racconti tutti da scoprire.
E poi fra gli amici c’è The Believer, e allora… è un segno del destino, Dave Eggers e io siamo proprio due anime gemelle.
«Se avete mai amato davvero qualcuno, saprete che c’è un fantasma in ogni cosa.»
February 10, 2017
4.5 stars
I occasionally had my qualms about Lions , but ended up loving it through the ending and further reflection.
A young, crazy-in-love couple are trying to escape their dying, backwater town. Two deaths occur in quick succession and shake up their world. The setting is realistic, sad, and beautiful.
Lions is a slow-build, but eventually reveals itself as a complex, carefully plotted powerhouse. Nadzam builds up our characters through small details and actions, and then gives the reader an emotional sucker punch with a single phrase or action. When a character dies, one of the townspeople immediately says something offensive during a reminiscing session. With one complex, multi-layered sentence, the town suddenly opened up and became real for me. It felt like a mystery novel in the best literary sort of way. Nadzam leaves you character breadcrumbs, and when someone does something puzzling or something seemingly incongruous, you are left to try to put the pieces together. It makes for engaging, sad character studies as the novel moves along. The setting is genuine and subdued. There are lots of well-described set pieces, familiar yet different.
My only complaint is one of the death plots. It rarely yielded anything interesting, puzzling, or different, and felt as if it was tossed in to add a "creepy" element. The only thing that was vaguely interesting was one symbol that represented how the people changed their viewpoint of this event over time. But for the most part, I tuned out during descriptions and narrative chunks surrounding this event. Sorry, I'm trying to avoid spoilers.
I don't normally read indie books, but I would heartily and enthusiastically recommend this one. If I didn't have a space problem for the books I currently own, I would buy this. Actually, I'm watching her read soon and I'll probably buy one and get her autograph because I am a SUCKER.
I had to do a one page write up of this for class, and I exceeded the limit and almost feel sad cause I have so much more to say.
UPDATE: Was able to have a conversation with the author over Skype in class. I updated the rating to reflect how I felt after speaking to her. Her author's intentions were wildly different than my interpretation, making me more sure that this book was amazing, ambiguous, and really complex. I love Bonnie Nadzam.
I occasionally had my qualms about Lions , but ended up loving it through the ending and further reflection.
A young, crazy-in-love couple are trying to escape their dying, backwater town. Two deaths occur in quick succession and shake up their world. The setting is realistic, sad, and beautiful.
Lions is a slow-build, but eventually reveals itself as a complex, carefully plotted powerhouse. Nadzam builds up our characters through small details and actions, and then gives the reader an emotional sucker punch with a single phrase or action. When a character dies, one of the townspeople immediately says something offensive during a reminiscing session. With one complex, multi-layered sentence, the town suddenly opened up and became real for me. It felt like a mystery novel in the best literary sort of way. Nadzam leaves you character breadcrumbs, and when someone does something puzzling or something seemingly incongruous, you are left to try to put the pieces together. It makes for engaging, sad character studies as the novel moves along. The setting is genuine and subdued. There are lots of well-described set pieces, familiar yet different.
My only complaint is one of the death plots. It rarely yielded anything interesting, puzzling, or different, and felt as if it was tossed in to add a "creepy" element. The only thing that was vaguely interesting was one symbol that represented how the people changed their viewpoint of this event over time. But for the most part, I tuned out during descriptions and narrative chunks surrounding this event. Sorry, I'm trying to avoid spoilers.
I don't normally read indie books, but I would heartily and enthusiastically recommend this one. If I didn't have a space problem for the books I currently own, I would buy this. Actually, I'm watching her read soon and I'll probably buy one and get her autograph because I am a SUCKER.
I had to do a one page write up of this for class, and I exceeded the limit and almost feel sad cause I have so much more to say.
UPDATE: Was able to have a conversation with the author over Skype in class. I updated the rating to reflect how I felt after speaking to her. Her author's intentions were wildly different than my interpretation, making me more sure that this book was amazing, ambiguous, and really complex. I love Bonnie Nadzam.
June 26, 2016
Lions is a novel with a unique feel, which I find hard to describe.
The blurb of the book is very comprehensive, so I won't go over it myself.
I will just write down a few opinions/impressions.
From the beginning, I was impressed with the beautiful, descriptive language. Nadzam is an incredibly talented writer, with an uncanny ability to make you feel, see, smell a place. Lions is, without a doubt, the main protagonist of this novel. Most people are deserting the place. A place where nothing grows. A place too bright, too dry, too empty. The few people still left in town seem to be under a spell.
Speaking of spells, there are some mystical, mysterious elements and characters in this novel, but they weren't developed enough and didn't go anywhere, so I felt a bit let down.
At some point, towards the middle, I sort of lost interest. It picks up towards the end, but still, there were quite a few loose ends that made me wonder if I'd skipped any pages. I hadn't.
So while I wasn't totally satisfied with this novel, I am very glad I came across Bonnie Nadzam's writing. I will definitely look up her previous novel, Lamb.
3.5 - 4 stars.
I've received this novel via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to Grove Press, Black Cat for the opportunity to read and review Lions.
Cover: 4 stars -great cover as far as representing what the novel is about, albeit not a pretty cover.
The blurb of the book is very comprehensive, so I won't go over it myself.
I will just write down a few opinions/impressions.
From the beginning, I was impressed with the beautiful, descriptive language. Nadzam is an incredibly talented writer, with an uncanny ability to make you feel, see, smell a place. Lions is, without a doubt, the main protagonist of this novel. Most people are deserting the place. A place where nothing grows. A place too bright, too dry, too empty. The few people still left in town seem to be under a spell.
Speaking of spells, there are some mystical, mysterious elements and characters in this novel, but they weren't developed enough and didn't go anywhere, so I felt a bit let down.
At some point, towards the middle, I sort of lost interest. It picks up towards the end, but still, there were quite a few loose ends that made me wonder if I'd skipped any pages. I hadn't.
So while I wasn't totally satisfied with this novel, I am very glad I came across Bonnie Nadzam's writing. I will definitely look up her previous novel, Lamb.
3.5 - 4 stars.
I've received this novel via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to Grove Press, Black Cat for the opportunity to read and review Lions.
Cover: 4 stars -great cover as far as representing what the novel is about, albeit not a pretty cover.
August 27, 2016
While this book is no where on the action packed spectrum, I did like it. The only word that comes to my mind in regards to describing the overall feel of this novel is Meandering. This book contains elaborate (beautiful writing, by the way) descriptions of the scenery and characters, but also lacked much of a plot. It took me longer to read than I expected for a novel under 300 pages... All I can say is that this is one that each needs to try on their own to see if it "fits" the reader. I won this from Goodreads, and am thankful for the opportunity to read this one.
July 27, 2016
A love story, a mystery, a ghost story, spiritual meditation, dreams, unfulfilled goals, grief; all related to a small rural, dying town called Lions in Colorado. Beautiful, descriptive writing of Colorado rural life. I woke up at 3 am thinking of this book and had to read, such beautiful prose I found it hypnotic and I'm left wondering... Loved it!
October 15, 2016
"Flat as hell's basement and empty as the boundless sky above"
Lions, a small town on the edge of collapse somewhere in Colorado is a ghostly place. Ghostly in part because it is slowly bleeding out, loosing its people to the larger cities around, but also because sometimes it seems that what's liveliest about Lions is its legends and the space left behind by the absence of people who've disappeared.
For years, like a slowly lifting line of birds there'd been a slow but steady flight out of town. Finally, inside this single summer, all but eleven people would go. One at a time, in the old brick stores and painted houses the windows were boarded or punched out with stones, eyes blind to a place so many years ago shed so much blood to claim."
There are only a handful of characters to this book: The Walker family: John, a gifted welder getting by on odd jobs but mysteriously happy with a life that doesn't seem to grant him any of comforts and the success he might deserve, his wife Georgianna and their son Gordon. There's Leigh, a young girl in love with Gordon, eager to start a new life with him outside of Lions and May her mother, who runs the town's diner. The book begins with a stranger and his dog walking into town one night, serving as a catalyst for the story to be told.
This book isn't living off it's plot however, little is happening here in Lions and if it is, it quickly becomes food for legend. The narrative reflects this perfectly. Nadzam's second novel is a highly atmospheric one, the description of the deserted place with its houses and abandoned gas-stations as well as the the landscape around it are of almost cinematic clarity. It's gorgeous writing which evokes an astoundingly strong sense of place. All the things she leaves out, all the strings she doesn't tie create a sense of mystery and melancholy that is hard to escape from.
I am unsure as to what the intentions of the author were as she wrote this book, just as I found the book in itself hard to grasp at times. But the more she hones in on the story of Gordon and Leigh - the ebb and tie of their relationship and their differences in what they consider their future to be - to me the question of how to live a life is the one that remained. And another thing that I kept thinking about towards the end: that absence is always a presence. Whether it's the deserted home where somebody's life was lived, or the space in us that still holds a place, a person that left.
This is an outstanding novel in many respects, most of all for Nazdam's incredible gift for language. Sometimes her atmospheric brush carried a bit too much paint for my liking though and despite their importance for the novel, Leigh and Gordon remained abstracts to me, not people of flesh and blood. This may well have been intentional, but it sometimes left me with a feeling of dissonance between the emotionally evocative language and my ability to really care for them or what was happening to them, other than conceptionally.
Nevertheless: I've enjoyed reading this book very much, and I will keep an eye out for other books by the author.
with thanks to Grove Atlantic/Grove Press Black and NetGalley for the ARC
Lions, a small town on the edge of collapse somewhere in Colorado is a ghostly place. Ghostly in part because it is slowly bleeding out, loosing its people to the larger cities around, but also because sometimes it seems that what's liveliest about Lions is its legends and the space left behind by the absence of people who've disappeared.
For years, like a slowly lifting line of birds there'd been a slow but steady flight out of town. Finally, inside this single summer, all but eleven people would go. One at a time, in the old brick stores and painted houses the windows were boarded or punched out with stones, eyes blind to a place so many years ago shed so much blood to claim."
There are only a handful of characters to this book: The Walker family: John, a gifted welder getting by on odd jobs but mysteriously happy with a life that doesn't seem to grant him any of comforts and the success he might deserve, his wife Georgianna and their son Gordon. There's Leigh, a young girl in love with Gordon, eager to start a new life with him outside of Lions and May her mother, who runs the town's diner. The book begins with a stranger and his dog walking into town one night, serving as a catalyst for the story to be told.
This book isn't living off it's plot however, little is happening here in Lions and if it is, it quickly becomes food for legend. The narrative reflects this perfectly. Nadzam's second novel is a highly atmospheric one, the description of the deserted place with its houses and abandoned gas-stations as well as the the landscape around it are of almost cinematic clarity. It's gorgeous writing which evokes an astoundingly strong sense of place. All the things she leaves out, all the strings she doesn't tie create a sense of mystery and melancholy that is hard to escape from.
I am unsure as to what the intentions of the author were as she wrote this book, just as I found the book in itself hard to grasp at times. But the more she hones in on the story of Gordon and Leigh - the ebb and tie of their relationship and their differences in what they consider their future to be - to me the question of how to live a life is the one that remained. And another thing that I kept thinking about towards the end: that absence is always a presence. Whether it's the deserted home where somebody's life was lived, or the space in us that still holds a place, a person that left.
This is an outstanding novel in many respects, most of all for Nazdam's incredible gift for language. Sometimes her atmospheric brush carried a bit too much paint for my liking though and despite their importance for the novel, Leigh and Gordon remained abstracts to me, not people of flesh and blood. This may well have been intentional, but it sometimes left me with a feeling of dissonance between the emotionally evocative language and my ability to really care for them or what was happening to them, other than conceptionally.
Nevertheless: I've enjoyed reading this book very much, and I will keep an eye out for other books by the author.
with thanks to Grove Atlantic/Grove Press Black and NetGalley for the ARC
July 18, 2016
Lions, population 117, is an arid Colorado town that's in its last slow stages of dying. Only a few families still eke out a living there, among them the Walkers, who own a welding workshop, and May Ransom and her daughter Leigh, who run the town diner. Something shifts when a stranger without a name passes through the town and, shortly afterwards, John Walker dies suddenly. The unidentified man is later found dead in Lions' water tower – an echo of an earlier crime. Was the stranger a ghost, a man who has visited the town before in a different guise, his appearance a portent each time?
The story keeps coming back to its two youngest characters. Leigh is desperate to leave Lions behind, dreaming of a better, broader life by way of a university education. Gordon, the Walkers' son and Leigh's boyfriend, is less keen; his love for Leigh, coupled with the sheer force of her ambition, pulls him in the same direction, but his loyalty to his father's memory binds him to the town. There are also murmurings about a ritual performed by the Walker men, a 'strange and terrible' task Gordon is rumoured to have taken on at the behest of his dying father...
'If you've ever really loved anyone, you know there's a ghost in everything,' goes the first sentence of Lions. It's not quite a ghost story itself, but it is filled with smaller ghost stories. Throughout, the main narrative is interspersed with local legends of terrible deaths, disappearing groups, figures shimmering on the horizon; it often feels like Nadzam is making the case for a kind of Western Gothic. Particularly memorable is the tale of a teacher who, ahead of an assignation with a lover, sends her nineteen students home early; the lover never arrives, and the children perish in a freak blizzard. 'Sometimes in a high wind, you can hear them crying, and her calling them by name.' Midway through the book, someone sticks up a sign on the road into Lions that reads 'living ghost town'. It seems like a taunt, but it's also used to advertise the town as a tourist attraction.
As I think the above demonstrates, the plot of Lions has more than enough to make it fascinating. And yet... it never quite gets there. I had two drafts of this review saved in different places, and when I combined them I found that in one I had described the book as 'maddeningly opaque' and in the other 'infuriatingly vague'. Scenes frequently switch so abruptly that I kept having to read back over paragraphs to check I hadn't missed or misread something; whole chunks are cut out of the story in this way. It's good for a story to demand close attention, but there's a thin line between that and making parts of the plot downright incomprehensible, and Lions walks that line in a very wobbly fashion.
Lions is nothing much like Nadzam's debut, Lamb. (I won't go on too much about how brilliant Lamb is here, but it really is brilliant. Here's my review. I really recommend it. And I do love the synchronicity between the titles of the two books.) There are traces of the same style – it's there in the loving, expansive descriptions of landscape – but where Lamb was tense, disturbing and uneasy, Lions is sedate and indefinite. It has its moments of beauty, but I'm afraid I didn't get anything much out of it.
I received an advance review copy of Lions from the publisher through Edelweiss.
The story keeps coming back to its two youngest characters. Leigh is desperate to leave Lions behind, dreaming of a better, broader life by way of a university education. Gordon, the Walkers' son and Leigh's boyfriend, is less keen; his love for Leigh, coupled with the sheer force of her ambition, pulls him in the same direction, but his loyalty to his father's memory binds him to the town. There are also murmurings about a ritual performed by the Walker men, a 'strange and terrible' task Gordon is rumoured to have taken on at the behest of his dying father...
'If you've ever really loved anyone, you know there's a ghost in everything,' goes the first sentence of Lions. It's not quite a ghost story itself, but it is filled with smaller ghost stories. Throughout, the main narrative is interspersed with local legends of terrible deaths, disappearing groups, figures shimmering on the horizon; it often feels like Nadzam is making the case for a kind of Western Gothic. Particularly memorable is the tale of a teacher who, ahead of an assignation with a lover, sends her nineteen students home early; the lover never arrives, and the children perish in a freak blizzard. 'Sometimes in a high wind, you can hear them crying, and her calling them by name.' Midway through the book, someone sticks up a sign on the road into Lions that reads 'living ghost town'. It seems like a taunt, but it's also used to advertise the town as a tourist attraction.
As I think the above demonstrates, the plot of Lions has more than enough to make it fascinating. And yet... it never quite gets there. I had two drafts of this review saved in different places, and when I combined them I found that in one I had described the book as 'maddeningly opaque' and in the other 'infuriatingly vague'. Scenes frequently switch so abruptly that I kept having to read back over paragraphs to check I hadn't missed or misread something; whole chunks are cut out of the story in this way. It's good for a story to demand close attention, but there's a thin line between that and making parts of the plot downright incomprehensible, and Lions walks that line in a very wobbly fashion.
Lions is nothing much like Nadzam's debut, Lamb. (I won't go on too much about how brilliant Lamb is here, but it really is brilliant. Here's my review. I really recommend it. And I do love the synchronicity between the titles of the two books.) There are traces of the same style – it's there in the loving, expansive descriptions of landscape – but where Lamb was tense, disturbing and uneasy, Lions is sedate and indefinite. It has its moments of beauty, but I'm afraid I didn't get anything much out of it.
I received an advance review copy of Lions from the publisher through Edelweiss.
July 5, 2016
This book contains elaborate descriptions of scenery and characters. There are a few incidents but not really a defined plot. If you feel like a relaxing read, this ones for you! Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
September 20, 2016
3.5 stars
This was a very difficult book for me to rate.
I think Bonnie Nadzam writes beautifully; her characters were rich and hearty like a robustly thick stew. (4 stars)
Lions reminded me of a lazy Sunday, laying in a hammock, with the warm sun shining on your face.
My problem was that I became restless, wanting more: More adventure, more excitement, just more... (3 stars).
This was a very difficult book for me to rate.
I think Bonnie Nadzam writes beautifully; her characters were rich and hearty like a robustly thick stew. (4 stars)
Lions reminded me of a lazy Sunday, laying in a hammock, with the warm sun shining on your face.
My problem was that I became restless, wanting more: More adventure, more excitement, just more... (3 stars).
Displaying 1 - 30 of 227 reviews