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The Blue Hour
WINNER OF THE 2018 COLORADO BOOK AWARD
"Pritchett writes with an evident love for the mountains and the people that call them home." ― Westword , One of Ten Great Books by Colorado Authors in 2017
The residents of Blue Moon Mountain form a tight-knit community of those living off the land, stunned by the beauty and isolation all around them. So when, at the onset of winter, the town veterinarian commits a violent act, the repercussions of that tragedy are felt all across the mountainside, upending their lives and causing their paths to twist and collide in unexpected ways.
The housecleaner rediscovering her sexual appetite, the farrier who must take in his traumatized niece, the grocer and her daughter, the therapist and the teacher, reaching out to the world in new and surprising ways, and the ragged couple trapped in a cycle of addiction and violence. They will all rise and converge upon the blue hour―the l'heure bleu, a time of desire, lust, honesty―and learn to navigate the often confusing paths of mourning and love.
Writing with passion for rural lives and the natural world, Laura Pritchett, who has been called "one of the most accomplished writers of the American West," graces the land of desire in vivid prose, exploring the lengths these characters―some of whom we've met in Pritchett's previous work―will traverse to protect their own.
"Pritchett writes with an evident love for the mountains and the people that call them home." ― Westword , One of Ten Great Books by Colorado Authors in 2017
The residents of Blue Moon Mountain form a tight-knit community of those living off the land, stunned by the beauty and isolation all around them. So when, at the onset of winter, the town veterinarian commits a violent act, the repercussions of that tragedy are felt all across the mountainside, upending their lives and causing their paths to twist and collide in unexpected ways.
The housecleaner rediscovering her sexual appetite, the farrier who must take in his traumatized niece, the grocer and her daughter, the therapist and the teacher, reaching out to the world in new and surprising ways, and the ragged couple trapped in a cycle of addiction and violence. They will all rise and converge upon the blue hour―the l'heure bleu, a time of desire, lust, honesty―and learn to navigate the often confusing paths of mourning and love.
Writing with passion for rural lives and the natural world, Laura Pritchett, who has been called "one of the most accomplished writers of the American West," graces the land of desire in vivid prose, exploring the lengths these characters―some of whom we've met in Pritchett's previous work―will traverse to protect their own.
241 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2017
52 people are currently reading
1463 people want to read
About the author
Laura Pritchett
21 books224 followersLaura Pritchett's seventh novel THREE KEYS is now available. Booklist has this to say: “A dedicated environmentalist and acclaimed nature writer, Pritchett’s keen observations of the world…are wondrous and lyrical, grounding her heroine’s journey in beauty and grace.”
Kirkus has this to say: “Engaging…thought-provoking and insightful. A satisfying examination of one woman’s journey of self-discovery.”
Pritchett is also the author of PLAYING WITH {WILD}FIRE (Torrey House, 2024), THE BLUE HOUR (Counterpoint, 2017), RED LIGHTNING (Counterpoint, 2015) STARS GO BLUE (Counterpoint, 2014), SKY BRIDGE (Milkweed Editions, 2009), and HELL'S BOTTOM, COLORADO (Milkweed Editions, 2001).
Known for championing the complex and contemporary West, giving voice to the working class, and re-writing the “Western,” her books have garnered the PEN USA Award, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, the WILLA, the High Plains Book Award, several Colorado Book Awards, and others.
She’s also the author of one play, two nonfiction books, and editor of three environmental-based anthologies.
She developed and directs the MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University, one of the few in the nation with a focus on environmental and place-based writing.
She earned her Ph.D. from Purdue University.
Her work has appeared in The New York Times, O Magazine, Salon, High Country News, The Millions, Publisher’s Weekly, The Sun, Brain, Child, and many others.
She is also known for her environmental stewardship, particularly in regard to land preservation and river health. You can find out more at her website www.laurapritchett.com or www.makingfriendswithdeath.com
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 117 reviews
December 20, 2016
A beautiful, suspenseful, sexy, and poetic novel. Pritchett is a writer you should read immediately if you haven't yet picked up any of her books. This new one is out in February 2017, and I think it's possibly her best one yet.
November 13, 2025
This is the fourth Laura Pritchett novel that I finish, but the first that I didn’t read. I listened to the audiobook which is well performed. It’s a good novel like I’ve come to expect from her, but there was something about the first chapter that almost made me give up on it. I stuck with it and the rest was good. Like Playing with Wild(fire) this is made up of short stories that are interconnected, but I felt like we got more time with each character here, so the stories probably centre around fewer characters.
It begins with a vet that has been struggling with mental issues for long and is about to take his life. This death affects the people in his community and is quite central to the rest of the story. So to some extend this is about loss and grief, but it is also more about sex than any other book that I’ve read by Pritchett. It’s not erotica, not even close, but the novel deals with sex in many forms through out the story. It is well written, though I think Playing with Wild(fire) touched me a bit more. Still, a very good novel.
It begins with a vet that has been struggling with mental issues for long and is about to take his life. This death affects the people in his community and is quite central to the rest of the story. So to some extend this is about loss and grief, but it is also more about sex than any other book that I’ve read by Pritchett. It’s not erotica, not even close, but the novel deals with sex in many forms through out the story. It is well written, though I think Playing with Wild(fire) touched me a bit more. Still, a very good novel.
March 8, 2017
I read The Blue Hour in one sitting, mesmerized by Pritchett's lyrical prose and astute observations about the human condition. Love and death figure prominently in these interconnected stories, and by the end of the novel you will feel as though you live on Blue Moon Mountain in Colorado. The characters are beautifully drawn and heart-wrenchingly honest ("I have suffered from a touch or two of the bad forces of this world, and they have hurt me," confesses one character -- reminding me of Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe). Readers will also recall Olive Kittredge in this portrait of a small town, told from various points of view, and the comparison is apt because Pritchett writes about deep emotions with no hint of sentimentality. I was sorry to see the book end. Five stars, definitely.
July 31, 2017
“When do we get the crazy notion that our life has a predictable trajectory? That it’s not just one crazy winding story?”
*
If you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to live in a small mountain community, Laura’s The Blue Hour is the novel to read. The interconnected stories follow the lives of these neighbors — through their quiet longings and secret affairs and small hopes — to paint a richly textured, kaleidoscopic view of what it means to live and love. A lovely introspective book.
*
If you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to live in a small mountain community, Laura’s The Blue Hour is the novel to read. The interconnected stories follow the lives of these neighbors — through their quiet longings and secret affairs and small hopes — to paint a richly textured, kaleidoscopic view of what it means to live and love. A lovely introspective book.
November 14, 2017
The 2017 novel "The Blue Hour" centers on the residents of a small mountain town in Colorado. After the local veterinarian, a middle-aged man with a mental disorder, commits suicide, the oddball inhabitants of the town of Blue Moon mourn his loss in various ways. The novel is an examination of how these people continue their lives with a lot of unspoken grief.
Author Laura Pritchett doesn't follow any one resident through this story of loss and life moving on. The narrative switches into a new point of view character with each chapter, leaving some readers to call this a short story collection. The book jacket calls "The Blue Hour" a novel though, with the loss of this veterinarian being the central story every chapter in the book is meant to illuminate.
While I am a big fan of literary fiction, and I have 5-starred many a short-story collection or loosely-connected/tangential-story novel like "The Blue Hour," this one just didn't work for me. The characters didn't engage me, the prose didn't achieve enough poetic vision to enchant me, and I found myself slogging through a lot of unappealing sexual content without any uplifting payoff on behalf of my trouble. By page 96, after 40% of the novel, I had to DNF.
Within the first 96 pages, every point-of-view character in this novel ruminated on sex and/or their genitals, performed sex with a partner, and one woman masturbated. Two different male characters in this novel performed cunnilingus, which is described as such:
"...you glide your head between your wife's legs and slide your tongue into her as deep as it will go... you hum and lick..." (page 4)
"...the only thing I can do is hold her thighs and push my tongue in further and hum." (page 88)
Because this book was so inundated with sex scenes, genital descriptions, and reflections on sex, I kept wanting to tell these male characters that this particular cunnilingus technique is really unproductive for getting their partners off. Most women achieve climax by having their clitoris directly stimulated, which cannot be done with tongue-thrusting alone. Since none of these men were stimulating their partners' clitoris with their fingers (or anything else), the tongue-thrusting alone was meant to be pleasurable -- and I guess the humming was supposed to increase the appeal. But as a female reader, I just felt uncomfortable reading these scenes, and annoyed.
This sounded like the kind of sex writing I'd expect in patriarchal-wannabe-porn erotica, circa 1995, or the all-out hardcore-porn erotica being published today. The kind of erotica that ignores the reality of women's bodies, and certainly denies the fact that the clitoris exists.
One middle-aged woman presents herself to the reader as something of an expert on sex, explaining that she has always been "fascinated" by sex and "paid attention to sex the way some people pay attention to race car drivers or sports teams" (page 14). This woman then goes on to talk about orgasms with her male partner. "Some women are not aware of their orgasmic capacity, including me, and that before him, I had thought I was unable to have more than one. I told him this was probably good for his male ego" (page 21).
While it is true that many women do not masturbate, and do not understand their orgasmic capacity, you also might immediately wonder, as I did: Does this couple engage in stimulating the woman's clitoris? The answer is: No. They have vaginal sex, and she says she likes her partner to enter from behind, even though her "rear is dimpled with fat" (page 12).
Now, I am not going to deny that some women can orgasm from vaginal penetration alone -- but the percentage of women who can seems to be pretty small. I do know that a lot of women seem to like the doggy-style position because it puts pressure on the G-spot (and accounts of the G-spot vary -- but this is the best terminology I have, so I'm using it) -- and G-spot pressure is not achieved well at all by tongue-thrusting. Fingers (and other things) are better for that. As far as tongue-thrusting goes, most women don't get much of anything out of it, as far as orgasm stimulation or actual pleasure goes.
This data comes from Daniel Bergner's excellent nonfiction book, "What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire," published in paperback in 2014. There are many other books about clitoral stimulation and female climax, but Daniel Bergner's book is my favorite.
I really wish the characters of "The Blue Hour" could've read "What Do Women Want?" And I really wish any woman framing herself as some kind of expert on orgasm and sex could at least use the word "clitoris" in this novel -- either in her interior monologue, or in direct dialogue with her male lover.
But no one in the pages I read of "The Blue Hour" ever used the word clitoris. Instead, the female sex-expert has orgasmic doggy-style sex with her partner under a tree surrounded by rotting apples and bear scat. In fact, there is so much bear scat around that they had trouble finding a clean patch of grass. This section of yard is also within view of a house where the town veterinarian's two young children live. (page 15)
I don't know what was worse -- the thought of having sex surrounded by the stench of rotting apples or all the piles of bear scat -- let alone that this pungent Love Site was within view of young children. These middle-aged folks of Blue Moon have some powerful libidos to be pounding away with each other in the midst of feces and rot and possible unintended exhibitionism.
The male lover of the woman who is "fascinated" by sex ends up having to take over the full-time care of his seven-year-old niece, when he learns that his brother-in-law is dying of cancer. This young child is named Honey, and she sleeps in diaper pull-ups because she wets the bed. The first night the man spends with his niece, she wakes in the morning and "climbs on top" of him. Her diaper is "puffy and stinks with pee" (page 82), and then she "climbs" on him again and "plops the squishy diaper" on his chest -- I guess this means she sits on his torso (page 83).
He tells her they need to take off her diaper, which Honey insists is a Pull-Up. "She pulls the not-diaper off and throws it on my floor. Her vagina, or vulva, or whatever it's officially called -- and I suppose I should know, *why don't* I know? -- is so hairless. A hairless V." (page 83)
In reflecting on Honey's nude body further, the man goes on to say, "I never considered what a female looks like without that hair." (page 84)
There are two things I want to say, regarding this scene. And no, I don't need to point out this is pervy af, because that ought to be obvious.
Here are my two things:
1. This male POV character is correct, he is looking at Honey's vulva, not her vagina. It is apparent that his sex-obsessed female lover isn't doing her job, if he cannot even name basic female anatomy with any kind of assurance, even though they've been pounding away amidst the rotting apples and bear scat and talking about female orgasms. If this guy doesn't know what a vulva is, I'm 100% positive he doesn't know the word clitoris, either.
2. What modern middle-aged man is completely unaware of pornography? Women in porn no longer have hair. Anywhere. Except on their heads -- the rest of the female body is waxed bare. And that's been the case for like, two decades or so. Yet this rugged mountain man who has sex amidst the bear scat seems unaware of pop culture, the internet, and like, any kind of connection to the real world. He sounds like a child in kindergarten, not a grown man.
After reading about this man perving on Honey's vulva, "The Blue Hour" switched narrators again, and shifted into the POV of a married woman who has decided to have an affair. She sees a strange man at a livestock auction who is sporting a mustache, and decides, what the heck, that guy will do. She goes into the bathroom to freshen her makeup before introducing herself. "In the bathroom, she tightens her face against the faint smell of urine and menstrual blood, puts a peppermint breath mint in her mouth, and leans forward over the sink to stare at her face in the mirror." (page 94)
Soon after this description, I just lost my will to keep going. "The Blue Hour" focuses so much on presenting human life as a nonstop grotesquery, there was simply no way I could read another 100+ pages of this.
Some reviewers have called this book "sexy" because the topic of sex is so central to the narrative. While there is a lot of research that supports the idea that our erotic lives help us recover from grief, I didn't find the characters in "The Blue Hour" to be sexy. Some of them were downright disgusting, even when they weren't perving on children.
I'm sad I had to DNF. I purchased this novel at full price: a hardback first edition. But the combination of bathroom stink and a pointless affair with a mustachioed man is too much to bear. I'm sorry, but I never found Tom Selleck attractive, and his mustache is the epitome of the "male mustache look" in my mind. If I have to read another tongue-thrusting cunnilingus scene starring Tom Selleck, with the lingering aroma of menstrual blood in my mind, I'm going to freaking lose it.
If you are a reader who finds this sort of material "sexy," and you believe you would enjoy this novel, then please message me your mailing address -- I'd be happy to mail you my copy of "The Blue Hour" free of charge.
Author Laura Pritchett doesn't follow any one resident through this story of loss and life moving on. The narrative switches into a new point of view character with each chapter, leaving some readers to call this a short story collection. The book jacket calls "The Blue Hour" a novel though, with the loss of this veterinarian being the central story every chapter in the book is meant to illuminate.
While I am a big fan of literary fiction, and I have 5-starred many a short-story collection or loosely-connected/tangential-story novel like "The Blue Hour," this one just didn't work for me. The characters didn't engage me, the prose didn't achieve enough poetic vision to enchant me, and I found myself slogging through a lot of unappealing sexual content without any uplifting payoff on behalf of my trouble. By page 96, after 40% of the novel, I had to DNF.
Within the first 96 pages, every point-of-view character in this novel ruminated on sex and/or their genitals, performed sex with a partner, and one woman masturbated. Two different male characters in this novel performed cunnilingus, which is described as such:
"...you glide your head between your wife's legs and slide your tongue into her as deep as it will go... you hum and lick..." (page 4)
"...the only thing I can do is hold her thighs and push my tongue in further and hum." (page 88)
Because this book was so inundated with sex scenes, genital descriptions, and reflections on sex, I kept wanting to tell these male characters that this particular cunnilingus technique is really unproductive for getting their partners off. Most women achieve climax by having their clitoris directly stimulated, which cannot be done with tongue-thrusting alone. Since none of these men were stimulating their partners' clitoris with their fingers (or anything else), the tongue-thrusting alone was meant to be pleasurable -- and I guess the humming was supposed to increase the appeal. But as a female reader, I just felt uncomfortable reading these scenes, and annoyed.
This sounded like the kind of sex writing I'd expect in patriarchal-wannabe-porn erotica, circa 1995, or the all-out hardcore-porn erotica being published today. The kind of erotica that ignores the reality of women's bodies, and certainly denies the fact that the clitoris exists.
One middle-aged woman presents herself to the reader as something of an expert on sex, explaining that she has always been "fascinated" by sex and "paid attention to sex the way some people pay attention to race car drivers or sports teams" (page 14). This woman then goes on to talk about orgasms with her male partner. "Some women are not aware of their orgasmic capacity, including me, and that before him, I had thought I was unable to have more than one. I told him this was probably good for his male ego" (page 21).
While it is true that many women do not masturbate, and do not understand their orgasmic capacity, you also might immediately wonder, as I did: Does this couple engage in stimulating the woman's clitoris? The answer is: No. They have vaginal sex, and she says she likes her partner to enter from behind, even though her "rear is dimpled with fat" (page 12).
Now, I am not going to deny that some women can orgasm from vaginal penetration alone -- but the percentage of women who can seems to be pretty small. I do know that a lot of women seem to like the doggy-style position because it puts pressure on the G-spot (and accounts of the G-spot vary -- but this is the best terminology I have, so I'm using it) -- and G-spot pressure is not achieved well at all by tongue-thrusting. Fingers (and other things) are better for that. As far as tongue-thrusting goes, most women don't get much of anything out of it, as far as orgasm stimulation or actual pleasure goes.
This data comes from Daniel Bergner's excellent nonfiction book, "What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire," published in paperback in 2014. There are many other books about clitoral stimulation and female climax, but Daniel Bergner's book is my favorite.
I really wish the characters of "The Blue Hour" could've read "What Do Women Want?" And I really wish any woman framing herself as some kind of expert on orgasm and sex could at least use the word "clitoris" in this novel -- either in her interior monologue, or in direct dialogue with her male lover.
But no one in the pages I read of "The Blue Hour" ever used the word clitoris. Instead, the female sex-expert has orgasmic doggy-style sex with her partner under a tree surrounded by rotting apples and bear scat. In fact, there is so much bear scat around that they had trouble finding a clean patch of grass. This section of yard is also within view of a house where the town veterinarian's two young children live. (page 15)
I don't know what was worse -- the thought of having sex surrounded by the stench of rotting apples or all the piles of bear scat -- let alone that this pungent Love Site was within view of young children. These middle-aged folks of Blue Moon have some powerful libidos to be pounding away with each other in the midst of feces and rot and possible unintended exhibitionism.
The male lover of the woman who is "fascinated" by sex ends up having to take over the full-time care of his seven-year-old niece, when he learns that his brother-in-law is dying of cancer. This young child is named Honey, and she sleeps in diaper pull-ups because she wets the bed. The first night the man spends with his niece, she wakes in the morning and "climbs on top" of him. Her diaper is "puffy and stinks with pee" (page 82), and then she "climbs" on him again and "plops the squishy diaper" on his chest -- I guess this means she sits on his torso (page 83).
He tells her they need to take off her diaper, which Honey insists is a Pull-Up. "She pulls the not-diaper off and throws it on my floor. Her vagina, or vulva, or whatever it's officially called -- and I suppose I should know, *why don't* I know? -- is so hairless. A hairless V." (page 83)
In reflecting on Honey's nude body further, the man goes on to say, "I never considered what a female looks like without that hair." (page 84)
There are two things I want to say, regarding this scene. And no, I don't need to point out this is pervy af, because that ought to be obvious.
Here are my two things:
1. This male POV character is correct, he is looking at Honey's vulva, not her vagina. It is apparent that his sex-obsessed female lover isn't doing her job, if he cannot even name basic female anatomy with any kind of assurance, even though they've been pounding away amidst the rotting apples and bear scat and talking about female orgasms. If this guy doesn't know what a vulva is, I'm 100% positive he doesn't know the word clitoris, either.
2. What modern middle-aged man is completely unaware of pornography? Women in porn no longer have hair. Anywhere. Except on their heads -- the rest of the female body is waxed bare. And that's been the case for like, two decades or so. Yet this rugged mountain man who has sex amidst the bear scat seems unaware of pop culture, the internet, and like, any kind of connection to the real world. He sounds like a child in kindergarten, not a grown man.
After reading about this man perving on Honey's vulva, "The Blue Hour" switched narrators again, and shifted into the POV of a married woman who has decided to have an affair. She sees a strange man at a livestock auction who is sporting a mustache, and decides, what the heck, that guy will do. She goes into the bathroom to freshen her makeup before introducing herself. "In the bathroom, she tightens her face against the faint smell of urine and menstrual blood, puts a peppermint breath mint in her mouth, and leans forward over the sink to stare at her face in the mirror." (page 94)
Soon after this description, I just lost my will to keep going. "The Blue Hour" focuses so much on presenting human life as a nonstop grotesquery, there was simply no way I could read another 100+ pages of this.
Some reviewers have called this book "sexy" because the topic of sex is so central to the narrative. While there is a lot of research that supports the idea that our erotic lives help us recover from grief, I didn't find the characters in "The Blue Hour" to be sexy. Some of them were downright disgusting, even when they weren't perving on children.
I'm sad I had to DNF. I purchased this novel at full price: a hardback first edition. But the combination of bathroom stink and a pointless affair with a mustachioed man is too much to bear. I'm sorry, but I never found Tom Selleck attractive, and his mustache is the epitome of the "male mustache look" in my mind. If I have to read another tongue-thrusting cunnilingus scene starring Tom Selleck, with the lingering aroma of menstrual blood in my mind, I'm going to freaking lose it.
If you are a reader who finds this sort of material "sexy," and you believe you would enjoy this novel, then please message me your mailing address -- I'd be happy to mail you my copy of "The Blue Hour" free of charge.
April 7, 2017
There is much to love in this poetic, sexy novel. Passages that I reread for the beauty and insight! The stories of these people, living somewhat isolated lives on the mountain, reaching for ways to connect and experience all the joy and beauty of life wherever they can find it, speaks of the truth of our existence. Much to savor and to contemplate.
March 21, 2019
“He had something poetic to say, but it wouldn't form in his mind. Something about how intimacy and love were the only sanctuaries, safe places for the human soul, like this mountain was a sanctuary in the rest of the crazed world, and the only road to intimacy was communication...”
“They had been hiking, individually in Montana, and both had stopped for lunch and to make cairns on a large bolder field, stacking rocks to show themselves the way. They saw each other doing that, and spoke of cairns and directions, and then fell in love. I was conceived in a meadow. I too was supposed to show them the way, which, they said, I did.”
I have fallen hard for Laura Pritchard. Yes, I loved Hell's Bottom Colorado, but this novel, really kicked it into high gear. I included a couple of quotes, but those were just 2 of many passages, I had tagged along the way. Her writing is breath-taking, but also tough, edgy and profane. She knows and understands the human spirit.
This story follows the residents of a rural community in Blue Moon Mountain, Colorado. Heartache, loneliness, kindness and passion, rules their everyday lives, like it does all of us. Fans of the late, great Kent Haruf, now have someone to follow. Rejoice!
“They had been hiking, individually in Montana, and both had stopped for lunch and to make cairns on a large bolder field, stacking rocks to show themselves the way. They saw each other doing that, and spoke of cairns and directions, and then fell in love. I was conceived in a meadow. I too was supposed to show them the way, which, they said, I did.”
I have fallen hard for Laura Pritchard. Yes, I loved Hell's Bottom Colorado, but this novel, really kicked it into high gear. I included a couple of quotes, but those were just 2 of many passages, I had tagged along the way. Her writing is breath-taking, but also tough, edgy and profane. She knows and understands the human spirit.
This story follows the residents of a rural community in Blue Moon Mountain, Colorado. Heartache, loneliness, kindness and passion, rules their everyday lives, like it does all of us. Fans of the late, great Kent Haruf, now have someone to follow. Rejoice!
February 24, 2017
I am honestly surprised by how much I liked this book as I don't typically read short story collections. I tend to like more character development than a short story can give but Laura Pritchett has written these characters so deeply. This book is raw and gritty and sad and beautiful. It really delves into real life and all that it emcompasses, it's sadness and beauty. The stories follow the residents of a very small community on Blue Mountain and are interlinking. You get one character's view in a story and then get another character's view of the same incident in another and then are able to see the picture more fully. Not only do you get to know the characters but you get to know Blue Moon Mountain itself and the natural world around it. It is beautifully written. I finished the book a few days ago and still keep thinking about it.
*I won this is a giveaway. Thank you Counterpoint Press and Literary Hub.
*I won this is a giveaway. Thank you Counterpoint Press and Literary Hub.
May 31, 2017
Laura Pritchett writes beautifully with heart and understanding of the human condition. The Blue Hour is a collection of stories in novel form, featuring the folks who live on Blue Moon Mountain. It is light in its joyful moments and dark in its despair. In a way, life on Blue Moon Mountain represents all communities everywhere: the variety of personalities, the range of secrets, and the different ways people deal with life challenges. Highly recommended for those who enjoy literary writing.
November 27, 2017
This book was a close five stars. The writing is beautiful and so are the individual stories- about life, death, and love. I just wish there were less characters. By the end I was confused who was who. I also wish the characters were revisited in subsequent chapters. But overall I loved this book.
September 1, 2017
This is a beautiful book. Prose that reads like poetry. Intimacy, sex and snow, violence and grief, attempted healing. A little wonder.
March 28, 2017
Beautifully told stories....I loved the characters, sense of place, and getting to know the people on the mountain. I'm heading to the library tomorrow to find her other books. She is a wonderful author.
July 28, 2017
This book swept me right up into its world. I adore this community and the tender bonds among the characters. Their stories are by turns spiritual, sensual, emotional, and erotic, all set within a vividly rendered landscape. Here, we explore what it means to be a human in love: fear that love will end, unrequited love, violence in love, regret and loss, pain and mental illness, fantasy, swinging, the end of love, brand new love, and responsibilities in love. Gorgeous and honest and profound. Sparkles with gems of wisdom and beauty. A must-read!
May 20, 2017
OK. Is it a novel or are they interconnected stories? Does it matter? Ultimately no, but not acknowledging it to be a novel struck me as rather pretentious. I was left thanking my lucky stars that I don't live on some mountain in Colorado and wondering why anyone would choose to do so. Oh, the natural beauty you say? OK. Next question. Do people really, really obsess this much about sex? I get the bit about damaged people forming a community, but I just feel irritated when I think about them. I *did* think the map was a nice touch.
February 14, 2017
A lovely, sad, human book. It is beautifully written, with each chapter moving the story along but told by a different person. Pritchett did an excellent job of making these many different characters real through their own point of view. The realness of the characters and the storyline are reminiscent to me of Kent Haruf's work. An achingly lovely book.
"...--we owe each other some shit. We owe each other some occasional flowers"
"...--we owe each other some shit. We owe each other some occasional flowers"
March 13, 2017
Totally engaging. Beautiful written. I loved how these short stories of the characters intertwined to create their community. The writing was honest and I was swept into the narrative.
June 4, 2017
Gorgeous writing & the kind of landscape-based fiction I love. The second-person start might be off-putting to some, but it's essential to what happens next, so hang in there. It works. After a terrible event, members of a small mountain community search for ways to connect more authentically.... I really don't get the reviewers who found this book depressing. If anything I found it a bit on the sentimental side. It's Harufian, but where Haruf walks just slightly on the other side of sentiment, this book tilts a bit (I do mean only a bit) to this side. I only wish that this desire to connect had manifested among the characters in ways other than than interpersonally, and especially in ways other than by coupling. Why not have some of them connect to life itself--through the land, through work, through spirituality/religion (it's a perplexing thing, how reluctant American novelists are to treat with religion and spirituality... I mean, in a community like this, surely there are churchgoers and new agers and all kinds of stuff like that, and while the story touches a bit on the new agey types, the touch is very light)? You would think that Anya, for example, would reach out to her children, or that some of her neighbors would, but we don't even see the kids as other than placeholders... Unlike almost all of the other characters on the mountain, who are gorgeously distinct, the kids don't come alive at all.
It also seemed statistically unlikely that there were enough people in this place to couple WITH. I mean. It's pretty hard in NYC to find someone to sleep with, I hear.
Anya is the most annoying of all the characters we are presented with. She is potentially the most affected by the catastrophe, but allows herself the least. We're told she's a therapist, but where does she practice? I can't imagine there's enough of a clientele locally (would sure be interesting if so... we'd have had a lot of opportunity for more insight into these characters if we saw them as Anya's patients). Does she commute to the town, an hour each way? We don't see her doing that. Do the kids drive with her? I guess the kids go to school because Thayne teaches them, but I can't remember, already, where the school is... there don't seem to be enough of them on the mountain, so I guess it's in town, but we don't see them riding a bus for an hour each way... For all Anya's experience as a therapist, she seems to have no insight into her husband's disease or his inner life. This is probably not unusual, but I was sorry the book didn't explore this irony, or that no one else called her on this. Only from another character in the book do we learn of her husband's other ailment, the physical pain he was in, and that perhaps it triggered the mental illness. We're left to wonder if Anya was even aware of this physical pain. If she even bothered to know of it.
Then there's the young writer, whose writing routine sounds like this satire piece in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201... , only I think we're supposed to believe it. She just sits down and gets out of the way, and out comes the story... Yeah, right.
Back to the sentiment... There's plenty of pain in the stories. Nothing is sugar-coated. But because we only get a brief glimpse into each character, and some, like Wyn, really aren't even very anchored in the viewpoints of the other characters, I did end up feeling slighted in many cases. Why bother with Thayne and Celeste? Or the older couple if this is all we get of them? Or Wyn? Or Gris? I barely remember them a day after finishing the book... It's a consistent complaint among the reviewers that there are too many characters. I suppose the WHO the story is about is the town, but I don't think it works. It would have been better, IMO, to limit it to 2-3 people, even if the POVs shift among the townspeople. So, say, Anya, Joe, and Ollie coping with Sy's death refracted through each other's eyes and maybe a few other people's, but with the focus on those three.
The ending was super saccharine. Felt like the wrap up to a TV series or something.
Minor nit: Having lived in a couple of small Colorado mountain towns myself, I was surprised that almost *everyone* lived in trailers. Weren't there any mining cabins and shacks? Maybe this was a function of several separate stories having been collected into a novel without having looked at the whole.
Anecdote was used more than once when antidote was meant. Not really the writer's fault as this happens and spell-check doesn't find it. But, Editor! Where were you?
But really, I'm kind of whining. The voices and characterizations were terrific. The landscape and people were respectfully handled... they're not rednecks but people who have chosen to live where they live. Even when they work as farriers and housecleaners, they read and are thoughtful. This reflects my experience living in small mountain towns--a wonderful change from the narrow little place in New England where I grew up.
Overall, I loved it. I know, I tend to focus on the negative while reviewing. The real relationship was between the community and the mountain. I was happy to live up on Blue Moon Mountain for a few nights of reading. I just wish my experience of the town could have been less fragmented.
It also seemed statistically unlikely that there were enough people in this place to couple WITH. I mean. It's pretty hard in NYC to find someone to sleep with, I hear.
Anya is the most annoying of all the characters we are presented with. She is potentially the most affected by the catastrophe, but allows herself the least. We're told she's a therapist, but where does she practice? I can't imagine there's enough of a clientele locally (would sure be interesting if so... we'd have had a lot of opportunity for more insight into these characters if we saw them as Anya's patients). Does she commute to the town, an hour each way? We don't see her doing that. Do the kids drive with her? I guess the kids go to school because Thayne teaches them, but I can't remember, already, where the school is... there don't seem to be enough of them on the mountain, so I guess it's in town, but we don't see them riding a bus for an hour each way... For all Anya's experience as a therapist, she seems to have no insight into her husband's disease or his inner life. This is probably not unusual, but I was sorry the book didn't explore this irony, or that no one else called her on this. Only from another character in the book do we learn of her husband's other ailment, the physical pain he was in, and that perhaps it triggered the mental illness. We're left to wonder if Anya was even aware of this physical pain. If she even bothered to know of it.
Then there's the young writer, whose writing routine sounds like this satire piece in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201... , only I think we're supposed to believe it. She just sits down and gets out of the way, and out comes the story... Yeah, right.
Back to the sentiment... There's plenty of pain in the stories. Nothing is sugar-coated. But because we only get a brief glimpse into each character, and some, like Wyn, really aren't even very anchored in the viewpoints of the other characters, I did end up feeling slighted in many cases. Why bother with Thayne and Celeste? Or the older couple if this is all we get of them? Or Wyn? Or Gris? I barely remember them a day after finishing the book... It's a consistent complaint among the reviewers that there are too many characters. I suppose the WHO the story is about is the town, but I don't think it works. It would have been better, IMO, to limit it to 2-3 people, even if the POVs shift among the townspeople. So, say, Anya, Joe, and Ollie coping with Sy's death refracted through each other's eyes and maybe a few other people's, but with the focus on those three.
The ending was super saccharine. Felt like the wrap up to a TV series or something.
Minor nit: Having lived in a couple of small Colorado mountain towns myself, I was surprised that almost *everyone* lived in trailers. Weren't there any mining cabins and shacks? Maybe this was a function of several separate stories having been collected into a novel without having looked at the whole.
Anecdote was used more than once when antidote was meant. Not really the writer's fault as this happens and spell-check doesn't find it. But, Editor! Where were you?
But really, I'm kind of whining. The voices and characterizations were terrific. The landscape and people were respectfully handled... they're not rednecks but people who have chosen to live where they live. Even when they work as farriers and housecleaners, they read and are thoughtful. This reflects my experience living in small mountain towns--a wonderful change from the narrow little place in New England where I grew up.
Overall, I loved it. I know, I tend to focus on the negative while reviewing. The real relationship was between the community and the mountain. I was happy to live up on Blue Moon Mountain for a few nights of reading. I just wish my experience of the town could have been less fragmented.
May 1, 2019
I cannot imagine giving this book anything less than 5 stars. Five stars even though I could’ve done without the hot tub chapter, and the fact that the end of the chapter that the meth dealer was first person disturbed me so much I considered not finishing the book. (That part does get resolved if I might insert a small spoiler—I usually don’t.) The book is called a novel and some have called it a series of interconnected short stories. What Pritchett does is move deftly through a small mountain community and gives a beautifully crafted insight into each member’s deepest thoughts and fears. I would love to read more by this author.
March 17, 2017
This is the 3rd book in the collection, what it feels like to be human. This is a story of pain and anguish, certainty and anxiety, isolation and reaching out to those around you. Told from the perspective of each person who lives on the Blue Moon Mountain in Colorado.
The mountain is full of personalities. You have a woman who hits life too hard, drinks too much and smokes too much pot, selling a little on the side. She is having a relationship with a man who is generous to the core. However, he lives with guilt because someone used his gun in an act of violence. It is about Honey, a child left alone after her father's death and a bachelor uncle that needs to step up and become her parent. It is about the father, preparing for his own death.
It is about a neighbor who has two kids and who works as a therapist and has a veterinarian for a husband, who has many psychological problems. It is about the young couple, who build a cabin up in the mountain. He becomes the veterinarian tech who goes from the sick cat to the cow with pinkeye to the cancer-ridden cockatiel. Constantly helping others, but living with guilt because he assisted his lover's grandfather with his suicide.
It is about the woman who runs the grocery store and her husband. A guy who takes care of the wildlife, and a married woman's relationship with him. It is about loneliness and depression. It is about grouping together with friends and going into the wilderness to find a bear. It has something for everyone. It shows everyone's faults and strengths and how they all try to help each other through the days they spend together. They become a true community, a family of sorts. It shows that no one is without pain and no one is without pleasure, just in different doses.
The mountain is full of personalities. You have a woman who hits life too hard, drinks too much and smokes too much pot, selling a little on the side. She is having a relationship with a man who is generous to the core. However, he lives with guilt because someone used his gun in an act of violence. It is about Honey, a child left alone after her father's death and a bachelor uncle that needs to step up and become her parent. It is about the father, preparing for his own death.
It is about a neighbor who has two kids and who works as a therapist and has a veterinarian for a husband, who has many psychological problems. It is about the young couple, who build a cabin up in the mountain. He becomes the veterinarian tech who goes from the sick cat to the cow with pinkeye to the cancer-ridden cockatiel. Constantly helping others, but living with guilt because he assisted his lover's grandfather with his suicide.
It is about the woman who runs the grocery store and her husband. A guy who takes care of the wildlife, and a married woman's relationship with him. It is about loneliness and depression. It is about grouping together with friends and going into the wilderness to find a bear. It has something for everyone. It shows everyone's faults and strengths and how they all try to help each other through the days they spend together. They become a true community, a family of sorts. It shows that no one is without pain and no one is without pleasure, just in different doses.
dnf
September 1, 2024Some people will love and admire the writing. I got to page 6, but by page 2, a 5-year old with a fever says, "I feel like a tooth that's dangling by one lousy thread." It's beautiful prose throughout the six pages, but I don't believe it.
I suspect that I meant to order a different The Blue Hour by some other author. Or maybe it's because there are multiple POVs? The map is okay and most maps I find are not. Whatever, this is not a book for me.
I suspect that I meant to order a different The Blue Hour by some other author. Or maybe it's because there are multiple POVs? The map is okay and most maps I find are not. Whatever, this is not a book for me.
June 24, 2018
I received this book free via Goodreads Giveaways.
This book was beautifully written. It's a story that follows a community and explains a wonderful story about how they are all connected and how in the end they remember the reason why their community is important to each of them.
This book was beautifully written. It's a story that follows a community and explains a wonderful story about how they are all connected and how in the end they remember the reason why their community is important to each of them.
July 12, 2022
Such a beautifully written book with thoughts on what it means it be human while dealing with the struggles that come with life. The story itself wasn’t super captivating, but the writing pulls you in
September 25, 2023
Not my favorite book. I enjoyed the description and her way of writing. However, I had a hard time staying connected to the book or characters.
October 22, 2023
You drive up the mountain, for there is a particular meadow you’re hoping for. The snow, it’s beautiful, and silent, and purifying. The snow, it’s disappearing into the black waters of the river beside the road. The snow, it’s rhythmic and pulls you forward, beckons you ahead.
February 2, 2018
**** 1/2
November 11, 2020
I just finished the chapter "Water out of Sunlight". It's Ollie's story of the meadow, his friend Sy's struggles, the daily visits, the fire, and ends with his wife and daughter checking in. Quoted from my friend: this is "a masterpiece about life".
April 19, 2017
Oh, I loved this book. So beautifully written - touches on all aspects of love- the gory and the beautiful. All varying types of relationships. Pritchett makes art with words.
November 20, 2025
So I was sitting with my daughter and her hamster Velvet the other day when Velvet was lovingly placed on my phone and she started crawling around. Imagine our shock, surprise, and joy when her tiny little hamster claws started clicking the icons and opening apps. Within a few seconds she opened my books folder and then the Hoopla app. A few seconds later I see the message asking if I wanted to download or cancel and her cute little hamster claws clicked download and that’s how I ended up with this book. My daughter insisted that I have to listen to it, so out of fear of offending her and dear Velvet, I did.
For the first ever Velvet Book Club selection, I will say that I enjoyed it much more than I expected to.
For the first ever Velvet Book Club selection, I will say that I enjoyed it much more than I expected to.
June 15, 2017
Certainly some very interesting characters in this book, but sometimes it was hard to track all of their stories and their interconnections. I got a little tired of the constant attention to the characters' sex lives. I read it through twice to better understand what was going on. Still, I probably would not recommend it highly.
September 27, 2017
Phew! That's one racy meadow on Blue Moon Mountain! It's as much a character as the rotating cast of rural Coloradoans Pritchett introduces us to one by one, in a series of linked essays. Most of the characters end up co-mingling in the meadow in some way at some point. But it's also the site of the tragedy that links all the characters, its lure both erotic and tragic. This is a beautiful, poetic book that, like life, leaves issues unresolved and characters still searching.
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