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Half Wild: A Heartbreaking Debut―Literary Fiction of Loneliness and Longing in Stark Vermont
“This heartbreakingly honest and authentic fiction will make you weep over, laugh at, and finally cheer for, mothers and daughters, sons and fathers, lovers and losers, and the human race in general. Half Wild is American fiction, and American literature, at its very best.”—Howard Frank Mosher, author of The Great Northern Express and Northern Borders
Spanning nearly forty years, the stories in Robin MacArthur’s formidable debut give voice to the dreams, hungers, and fears of a diverse cast of Vermonters—adolescent girls, aging hippies, hardscrabble farmers, disconnected women, and solitary men. Straddling the border between civilization and the wild, they all struggle to make sense of their loneliness and longings in the stark and often isolating enclaves they call home—golden fields and white-veiled woods, dilapidated farmhouses and makeshift trailers, icy rivers and still lakes rouse the imagination, tether the heart, and inhabit the soul.
In “Creek Dippers,” a teenage girl vows to escape the fate that has trapped her eccentric mother. In “God’s Country,” an elderly woman is unexpectedly reminded of a forbidden youthful passion and the chance she did not take. Returning to her childhood house when her mother falls ill, a daughter grapples with her own sense of belonging in “The Women Where I’m From.”
With striking prose powerful in its clarity and purity, MacArthur effortlessly renders characters—men and women, young and old—cleaved to the fierce and beautiful land that has defined them.
Spanning nearly forty years, the stories in Robin MacArthur’s formidable debut give voice to the dreams, hungers, and fears of a diverse cast of Vermonters—adolescent girls, aging hippies, hardscrabble farmers, disconnected women, and solitary men. Straddling the border between civilization and the wild, they all struggle to make sense of their loneliness and longings in the stark and often isolating enclaves they call home—golden fields and white-veiled woods, dilapidated farmhouses and makeshift trailers, icy rivers and still lakes rouse the imagination, tether the heart, and inhabit the soul.
In “Creek Dippers,” a teenage girl vows to escape the fate that has trapped her eccentric mother. In “God’s Country,” an elderly woman is unexpectedly reminded of a forbidden youthful passion and the chance she did not take. Returning to her childhood house when her mother falls ill, a daughter grapples with her own sense of belonging in “The Women Where I’m From.”
With striking prose powerful in its clarity and purity, MacArthur effortlessly renders characters—men and women, young and old—cleaved to the fierce and beautiful land that has defined them.
224 pages, Paperback
First published August 2, 2016
60 people are currently reading
1166 people want to read
About the author
Robin MacArthur
4 books51 followersRobin MacArthur lives on the hillside farm where she was born in Marlboro, Vermont. Her debut collection of short stories, Half Wild, won the 2017 PEN New England award for fiction, and was a finalist for both the New England Book Award and the Vermont Book Award.
Her forthcoming novel, Heart Spring Mountain, will be published by Ecco (HarperCollins) in January of 2018.
Robin is also the editor of Contemporary Vermont Fiction: An Anthology, one-half of the indie folk duo Red Heart the Ticker, and the recipient of two Creation Grants from the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
She has taught in many non-traditional settings throughout the US.
When not writing, Robin spends her time prying rocks out of unruly garden soil, picking blackberries and raspberries outside her back door, and traipsing through woods with her big-hearted and half-wild children.
Her forthcoming novel, Heart Spring Mountain, will be published by Ecco (HarperCollins) in January of 2018.
Robin is also the editor of Contemporary Vermont Fiction: An Anthology, one-half of the indie folk duo Red Heart the Ticker, and the recipient of two Creation Grants from the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
She has taught in many non-traditional settings throughout the US.
When not writing, Robin spends her time prying rocks out of unruly garden soil, picking blackberries and raspberries outside her back door, and traipsing through woods with her big-hearted and half-wild children.
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September 28, 2018
I don't hate it here; I hate what happens to me when I am here. I hate the way it draws me in. The way it leads to nowhere but itself. The way everyone and everything is connected and a person cannot be free. "It's too beautiful to hate it here," I say.
this is a lovely collection of stories about characters living in the less-populated, woodsy areas of vermont. spanning forty years or so, there are plenty of recurring themes and connections between characters, but it's not a novel-in-stories; each story is its own fully-realized tale. the most prominent theme is the relationship between these characters and their natural surroundings - whether they embrace a peaceful life and a love for the woods, or whether they feel trapped, longing for more "civilization" than what bare nature provides.
this is not at all grit lit - although it's mostly about working class characters, the tone is altogether different than what i usually gravitate towards in my backwoods lit. this one is gentler, more ephemeral, almost wispy at times. but it's also very powerful, with some really great fuel for ruminating on later.
i got an arc of this aaaages ago, and i read it in january. i'd planned on reviewing it months ago, and started going back through it, taking notes and marking quotes and i actually ended up reading the whole thing again in the bathtub, where i was soothing my sore back with epsom salts. it totally sucked me in, and i loved it more on my second reading, giving it a whole extra star. unfortunately, the epsom salts were insufficient for what was really going on with my back, and i ended up having to go in for surgery, which meant that i didn't review this when i'd intended to, and now i find myself back in that hazy place where i'm struggling to remember all the things i wanted to celebrate about this collection and i just don't have time to read it a third time. so, warning - i'm probably going to make a mess of this review, since reviewing short story collections is always a challenge for me, but if i DO make a mess of it, know that the book is undoubtably better than anything i can say about it, and check it out for yourself. there are several standouts in the collection, and i will * my favorites, as i go through and do the painstaking work of reviewing each story separately, because i don't know how else to do it.
CREEK DIPPERS
this story is a good introduction to the general themes of the collection. it's only seven pages long, but it sets up the love/hate relationship that characters will have with their surroundings. it's about a sixteen-year-old girl named angel and her mother sue, who had her when she was only seventeen. sue is completely at home in the woods, content and tranquil - feeling a spiritual connection that restless angel lacks:
I don't want to go down to the creek with my mom. Nor do I want to be living here at sixteen in this deciduous/coniferous northeastern no-man's-land of Vicksburg where we were both born, forty square miles of intersecting roads, intersecting streams, failing farms, and rocky ledge.
despite being restless now, yearning for more and desperate not to become trapped here, angel is also beginning to feel the twinges of a more mature perspective and recognizes that in her future, wherever it is, she will look back on these quiet times with nostalgia.
even though it's really short, and is one of those wispier stories that feels fragmented and photographic, there are some really strong moments, and the last sentence is just a perfect tonal ending.
THE HEART OF THE WOODS
this story is more developed than the opener, and explores the tricky position of a woman torn between dueling factions: My father's a logger, my brother a builder of houses, my husband a real estate man. sally's relationship with her father is complicated by his disdain for her husband's profession, which he deems vulgar and too far removed from the honest labor of working the land. he's always testing her loyalties, baiting her for having married up and not having the same values with which she was raised. he abhors nature being gutted to make way for civilization and progress, and believes there's more dignity in living off the land than selling it, usually to outsiders.
How many years will I have to walk this line - trying to prove myself in both worlds I belong to?
it's a tricky balance - sally feels the "unsettling hunger" of the woods, and is drawn to it by her family roots, but as an adult, she has other things to consider. there's a really well-maintained sense of calm forbearance here, and some excellent details.
*WINGS, 1989
this is told from the POV of a little girl born to parents with different opinions about the glory of nature. a young well-off suburban woman with dreams of being a poet falls for a blue-collar fellow and she follows him in his dream to go back to the land, drawn to the romantic idea of homesteading, but she is worn down by the hardship that this kind of life actually entails. this is not the whitmanny life she thought she was signing up for; nature isn't all bounty and light - nature also erodes, and she finds herself endlessly weeding the garden and repairing the front door and tending to her daughter, lonely while her husband is off building houses, leaving them alone for days at a time. it's a slow poison that her daughter notices, but is helpless to dissolve. it's not all doom and gloom, though - it's about quiet disappointment but also about a little girl coming of age and forming her own opinions and values.
*MAGGIE IN THE TREES
this is about a woman named maggie and the two men who love her. maggie is the embodiment of moody nature; a truly free spirit, skittish, restless, but not restless for another place like other characters in the collection - she's "all mountain," restless the way a stream is restless, embodying the constant animation of nature.
and to two best friends, transplants from the massachusetts suburbs to the vermont mountains, she is "quiet and wild and inscrutable," symbolic of all the fierce hunger of untamable nature. she is rich's wife, but pete quickly becomes infatuated with her:
…I thought then how she looked like she was of this place, like she was some kind of creature or tree that had grown here, and wondered how Rich had landed something as spectacular as that.
maggie, though, is as sad as she is restless, and when a relationship develops between her and pete over time, it throws him for a loop, unsure what he can offer her that rich cannot, complicating his thirty-year friendship, and ultimately satisfying no one. except me, because i loved this story.
*KARMANN
"But I can't fucking wait. I fucking hate waiting. We're all just fucking waiting.
"Everyone here is waiting," I said.
"Flipping their wigs, waiting," Annie said. It was true: we were all waiting for the people we knew and loved to disappear, or die, or not.
this takes place during the vietnam war, where annie and clare are two seventeen-year-old girls dreaming of all the places they will go when they finally break out of their smalltown lives.
California was where we wanted to go most: a place our mothers had never been and would never go, a place where we thought no one believed in war.
annie's brother jack, who is "everything this place was not," and who clare has a crush on, is off in vietnam, and while he is gone, the girls smoke pot and imagine their lives and all the rich world of possibilities that will one day be open to them.
and then jack comes back.
and both girls will be confronted with reality and consequences and how even when you get what you think you want, it's never how you'd imagined it.
GOD'S COUNTRY
this is one of the longer pieces in the collection, and i liked so much of it, but overall it wasn't a favorite. it's about a woman named cora whose grandson kevin has gotten mixed up with a terrible crowd; taking part in an evil she initially cannot comprehend. but as she tries to understand where he went wrong, her memories become an examination of racism, and the ways it has always been present in her life, although its target has changed over time. she begins to understand that her own past weakness has made her culpable in perpetuating racism - that sometimes saying nothing is as much a part of the problem as hate speech and signs. i loved-loved all of the story of her past, but the present-day storyline was less interesting to me.
BARRED OWL
this story is about a girl who most definitely wants out of vicksburg, and she's using every red dress, bad boy, sex and drugs cliché to burn her way through the place where she's at until she can make tracks for somewhere more.
and yet...
*WHERE FIELDS TRY TO LIE
Home - a facet of my life as substantial as love has been, or work. The place I am always trying to leave or return to, the place that will not let me be.
a man returns to his family home, and confronts the demons and dramas of his past; his failed marriage, his childhood, his brother, and mostly - his father.
This morning this room smells of cellar dampness and mouse shit, and the driveway, visible through the window, my two-year-old red Volvo incongruent in its center, is a line of black mud leading toward the doorway of the large barn where my father took his life one morning at dawn. So I am not back with any romantic dream of returning to the land. That dream, with all its sweetness, is for others with far more innocence than I will ever know.
this one is probably the best-written story in the collection, and it's a wonderfully descriptive account of grief and guilt and learning how to forgive ourselves.
It's a terrible thing to have been the lucky one.
THE LONG ROAD TURNS TO JOY
this story didn't leave much of an impression on me. super-hippie mom named apple waits for news of her marine son (named sparrow - jeez) stationed in afghanistan and reflects on her life. meh.
*LOVE BIRDS
i loved every little bit of this story, and i don't want to say much about it. it's about an older couple and their peaceful connection to the land and each other, and it's a beautiful and haunting story of quietude.
We emptied the thermos and Tub started driving home. He took some of the skinny back roads we like going on; Turnpike, Old Farm, Fox. They're roads we'd known our whole lives. Roads we'd seen change like our own faces. You could map our whole lives on these little two-bit dirt roads and not have to go farther than forty square miles. I don't say that like I think I'm missing something.
THE WOMEN WHERE I'M FROM
like the first story, this one is about mother/daughter relationships, as a woman returns to her family's vicksburg farm to help her mother, recently diagnosed with breast cancer. it's another case where the one who got out returns to find that time has stood still, with only a few deaths and births changing the scenery.
i wasn't crazy about the first story and i wasn't crazy about the last story and i wasn't crazy about them in the same way, so at first i thought this was more character-overlap and that they might be the same characters further on in their lives, which i think would have been a nice way to close the collection, but no. it's a perfectly good story, but it didn't stand out enough to be a favorite. however, as with all of the stories in this collection, there's some truly brilliant writing on display, and i didn't dislike any of the stories.
okay, that's the best i can do, but i think if you decide to read this for yourselves, you will find it a very strong debut, and much better than my scattered blatherings have made it sound.
come to my blog!
this is a lovely collection of stories about characters living in the less-populated, woodsy areas of vermont. spanning forty years or so, there are plenty of recurring themes and connections between characters, but it's not a novel-in-stories; each story is its own fully-realized tale. the most prominent theme is the relationship between these characters and their natural surroundings - whether they embrace a peaceful life and a love for the woods, or whether they feel trapped, longing for more "civilization" than what bare nature provides.
this is not at all grit lit - although it's mostly about working class characters, the tone is altogether different than what i usually gravitate towards in my backwoods lit. this one is gentler, more ephemeral, almost wispy at times. but it's also very powerful, with some really great fuel for ruminating on later.
i got an arc of this aaaages ago, and i read it in january. i'd planned on reviewing it months ago, and started going back through it, taking notes and marking quotes and i actually ended up reading the whole thing again in the bathtub, where i was soothing my sore back with epsom salts. it totally sucked me in, and i loved it more on my second reading, giving it a whole extra star. unfortunately, the epsom salts were insufficient for what was really going on with my back, and i ended up having to go in for surgery, which meant that i didn't review this when i'd intended to, and now i find myself back in that hazy place where i'm struggling to remember all the things i wanted to celebrate about this collection and i just don't have time to read it a third time. so, warning - i'm probably going to make a mess of this review, since reviewing short story collections is always a challenge for me, but if i DO make a mess of it, know that the book is undoubtably better than anything i can say about it, and check it out for yourself. there are several standouts in the collection, and i will * my favorites, as i go through and do the painstaking work of reviewing each story separately, because i don't know how else to do it.
CREEK DIPPERS
this story is a good introduction to the general themes of the collection. it's only seven pages long, but it sets up the love/hate relationship that characters will have with their surroundings. it's about a sixteen-year-old girl named angel and her mother sue, who had her when she was only seventeen. sue is completely at home in the woods, content and tranquil - feeling a spiritual connection that restless angel lacks:
I don't want to go down to the creek with my mom. Nor do I want to be living here at sixteen in this deciduous/coniferous northeastern no-man's-land of Vicksburg where we were both born, forty square miles of intersecting roads, intersecting streams, failing farms, and rocky ledge.
despite being restless now, yearning for more and desperate not to become trapped here, angel is also beginning to feel the twinges of a more mature perspective and recognizes that in her future, wherever it is, she will look back on these quiet times with nostalgia.
even though it's really short, and is one of those wispier stories that feels fragmented and photographic, there are some really strong moments, and the last sentence is just a perfect tonal ending.
THE HEART OF THE WOODS
this story is more developed than the opener, and explores the tricky position of a woman torn between dueling factions: My father's a logger, my brother a builder of houses, my husband a real estate man. sally's relationship with her father is complicated by his disdain for her husband's profession, which he deems vulgar and too far removed from the honest labor of working the land. he's always testing her loyalties, baiting her for having married up and not having the same values with which she was raised. he abhors nature being gutted to make way for civilization and progress, and believes there's more dignity in living off the land than selling it, usually to outsiders.
How many years will I have to walk this line - trying to prove myself in both worlds I belong to?
it's a tricky balance - sally feels the "unsettling hunger" of the woods, and is drawn to it by her family roots, but as an adult, she has other things to consider. there's a really well-maintained sense of calm forbearance here, and some excellent details.
*WINGS, 1989
this is told from the POV of a little girl born to parents with different opinions about the glory of nature. a young well-off suburban woman with dreams of being a poet falls for a blue-collar fellow and she follows him in his dream to go back to the land, drawn to the romantic idea of homesteading, but she is worn down by the hardship that this kind of life actually entails. this is not the whitmanny life she thought she was signing up for; nature isn't all bounty and light - nature also erodes, and she finds herself endlessly weeding the garden and repairing the front door and tending to her daughter, lonely while her husband is off building houses, leaving them alone for days at a time. it's a slow poison that her daughter notices, but is helpless to dissolve. it's not all doom and gloom, though - it's about quiet disappointment but also about a little girl coming of age and forming her own opinions and values.
*MAGGIE IN THE TREES
this is about a woman named maggie and the two men who love her. maggie is the embodiment of moody nature; a truly free spirit, skittish, restless, but not restless for another place like other characters in the collection - she's "all mountain," restless the way a stream is restless, embodying the constant animation of nature.
and to two best friends, transplants from the massachusetts suburbs to the vermont mountains, she is "quiet and wild and inscrutable," symbolic of all the fierce hunger of untamable nature. she is rich's wife, but pete quickly becomes infatuated with her:
…I thought then how she looked like she was of this place, like she was some kind of creature or tree that had grown here, and wondered how Rich had landed something as spectacular as that.
maggie, though, is as sad as she is restless, and when a relationship develops between her and pete over time, it throws him for a loop, unsure what he can offer her that rich cannot, complicating his thirty-year friendship, and ultimately satisfying no one. except me, because i loved this story.
*KARMANN
"But I can't fucking wait. I fucking hate waiting. We're all just fucking waiting.
"Everyone here is waiting," I said.
"Flipping their wigs, waiting," Annie said. It was true: we were all waiting for the people we knew and loved to disappear, or die, or not.
this takes place during the vietnam war, where annie and clare are two seventeen-year-old girls dreaming of all the places they will go when they finally break out of their smalltown lives.
California was where we wanted to go most: a place our mothers had never been and would never go, a place where we thought no one believed in war.
annie's brother jack, who is "everything this place was not," and who clare has a crush on, is off in vietnam, and while he is gone, the girls smoke pot and imagine their lives and all the rich world of possibilities that will one day be open to them.
and then jack comes back.
and both girls will be confronted with reality and consequences and how even when you get what you think you want, it's never how you'd imagined it.
GOD'S COUNTRY
this is one of the longer pieces in the collection, and i liked so much of it, but overall it wasn't a favorite. it's about a woman named cora whose grandson kevin has gotten mixed up with a terrible crowd; taking part in an evil she initially cannot comprehend. but as she tries to understand where he went wrong, her memories become an examination of racism, and the ways it has always been present in her life, although its target has changed over time. she begins to understand that her own past weakness has made her culpable in perpetuating racism - that sometimes saying nothing is as much a part of the problem as hate speech and signs. i loved-loved all of the story of her past, but the present-day storyline was less interesting to me.
BARRED OWL
this story is about a girl who most definitely wants out of vicksburg, and she's using every red dress, bad boy, sex and drugs cliché to burn her way through the place where she's at until she can make tracks for somewhere more.
and yet...
*WHERE FIELDS TRY TO LIE
Home - a facet of my life as substantial as love has been, or work. The place I am always trying to leave or return to, the place that will not let me be.
a man returns to his family home, and confronts the demons and dramas of his past; his failed marriage, his childhood, his brother, and mostly - his father.
This morning this room smells of cellar dampness and mouse shit, and the driveway, visible through the window, my two-year-old red Volvo incongruent in its center, is a line of black mud leading toward the doorway of the large barn where my father took his life one morning at dawn. So I am not back with any romantic dream of returning to the land. That dream, with all its sweetness, is for others with far more innocence than I will ever know.
this one is probably the best-written story in the collection, and it's a wonderfully descriptive account of grief and guilt and learning how to forgive ourselves.
It's a terrible thing to have been the lucky one.
THE LONG ROAD TURNS TO JOY
this story didn't leave much of an impression on me. super-hippie mom named apple waits for news of her marine son (named sparrow - jeez) stationed in afghanistan and reflects on her life. meh.
*LOVE BIRDS
i loved every little bit of this story, and i don't want to say much about it. it's about an older couple and their peaceful connection to the land and each other, and it's a beautiful and haunting story of quietude.
We emptied the thermos and Tub started driving home. He took some of the skinny back roads we like going on; Turnpike, Old Farm, Fox. They're roads we'd known our whole lives. Roads we'd seen change like our own faces. You could map our whole lives on these little two-bit dirt roads and not have to go farther than forty square miles. I don't say that like I think I'm missing something.
THE WOMEN WHERE I'M FROM
like the first story, this one is about mother/daughter relationships, as a woman returns to her family's vicksburg farm to help her mother, recently diagnosed with breast cancer. it's another case where the one who got out returns to find that time has stood still, with only a few deaths and births changing the scenery.
i wasn't crazy about the first story and i wasn't crazy about the last story and i wasn't crazy about them in the same way, so at first i thought this was more character-overlap and that they might be the same characters further on in their lives, which i think would have been a nice way to close the collection, but no. it's a perfectly good story, but it didn't stand out enough to be a favorite. however, as with all of the stories in this collection, there's some truly brilliant writing on display, and i didn't dislike any of the stories.
okay, that's the best i can do, but i think if you decide to read this for yourselves, you will find it a very strong debut, and much better than my scattered blatherings have made it sound.
come to my blog!
July 27, 2016
I usually like my short stories odd. Or funny. Absurd. Slightly magical. These were none of those things. These were stories about the lives of country people. Lives we would consider slower. People that would most often be considered working class. And boy were they lovely and, at times, quietly heartbreaking. I grew up in the country. The setting of this, in both geography and time, was not my home, but I still recognized the truth.
October 4, 2016
A wonderful collection of interesting stories that weave in and out of each other through relationships, time, and location. The writing made me have feelings and connections with people, and maybe location, that wouldn't have captured my attention if the writing itself wasn't engaging. What I didn't like, which is probably more my fault, was that going from story and story and realizing that the characters had completely changed. Can't wait to read more from this author in the future.
December 26, 2019
Sensuous, atmospheric and bucolic collection of stories set in Vermont. I could walk these forests, swim in these lakes and sit beside the characters in the local bar. I really want to read MacArthur's novel now because I would have preferred a little more story, although (spoiler) I know that Half Wild is going to be in my librarian husband's top ten reads of the year.
August 18, 2016
I don't have enough good things to say about this book. These short stories are raw, haunting, and incredibly beautiful. MacArthur writes about the side of Vermont I've never seen - the crumbling houses, the trailer parks, the drug addicts - the 'wilderness' of human existence - that space between civilization and wildness, a place we all crave, adore, and despise. These stories, despite being so firmly rooted in 'place', are accessible and oddly relatable. A stunning debut collection.
* Thank you Terry Gross for interviewing MacArthur on Fresh Air and introducing me to this book!
* Thank you Terry Gross for interviewing MacArthur on Fresh Air and introducing me to this book!
September 14, 2016
"Populated by ghosts and animals and lonely women. Frickin' heaven, my mom calls these woods. Heaven: like she'd know. She's thirty-three years old and pocked with life's failures: her sun-lined face and cheaply tattooed arms and soot-lined lungs."
Damn! I devoured these stories, there were honest, raw, powerful and sometimes ugly. These women may be down on their luck, their lives aren't pretty but they are strong and alive, no matter the kicks life gives them. "My mom says it smells like desire and tips her head back, sniffing. Desire. For a moment I know we both feel it: our shared loneliness." Gorgeous writing, and those who go without still want and hunger as much as those born under lucky stars.
Some may have escaped the land, but it's still burrowed inside of them. You never quite wash off the dirt of your origins, do you? You can hate and love a place, as much as you can long for and reject a person, a thing... These are things we may think and feel but never speak. It's about the wounds, the sore spots we can't stop touching, the mothers we both love and hate and recognize in ourselves. It's the men we want, think we're getting- it's those we open ourselves to and abandon. Gorgeous, one of the best short story collections I've read this year. These are not happy stories, but they are honest, by God they are honest! Not reviewing for any publisher, just picked it up- must have called to me!
Damn! I devoured these stories, there were honest, raw, powerful and sometimes ugly. These women may be down on their luck, their lives aren't pretty but they are strong and alive, no matter the kicks life gives them. "My mom says it smells like desire and tips her head back, sniffing. Desire. For a moment I know we both feel it: our shared loneliness." Gorgeous writing, and those who go without still want and hunger as much as those born under lucky stars.
Some may have escaped the land, but it's still burrowed inside of them. You never quite wash off the dirt of your origins, do you? You can hate and love a place, as much as you can long for and reject a person, a thing... These are things we may think and feel but never speak. It's about the wounds, the sore spots we can't stop touching, the mothers we both love and hate and recognize in ourselves. It's the men we want, think we're getting- it's those we open ourselves to and abandon. Gorgeous, one of the best short story collections I've read this year. These are not happy stories, but they are honest, by God they are honest! Not reviewing for any publisher, just picked it up- must have called to me!
January 15, 2018
Time and again I come across another book of short stories that just floor me. Some classics obviously include the short work of Flannery O'Connor, Robert Cheever, JD Salinger, Ernest Hemingway, and Raymond Carver. More recently I've been drawn to Bonnie Jo Campbell and Lucia Berlin. When an editor I know and trust recommended Half Wild on one of those best of the year lists everyone generates as one cycle of months shuffles into another cycle, I bought the collection on impulse. Hit the link right away and the book arrived a few days later in my mailbox and I opened it that night and could not stop reading, did not want to stop. So I parceled it out in small morsels. Just one (maybe two) stories a night. Robin MacArthur's eye on the so-called ordinary people of back woods Vermont is as if the Carver and the Campbell listed above got together and had short story babies, but then went off drinking a little more than they should and left the kids under the not-always-so-careful watch of the also previously listed, Berlin and O'Connor. In other words, these stories are nuggets of truth. From a grandmother fretting over a beloved grandson's racism (and the memories this opens) to a woman coming home to lose her hippie mother to cancer, these stories are pure character, and because the characters are so alive, so dimensional, opening the collection is to invite those living by the Silver Creek and Whiskey Mountain into whatever space you are reading. Why go out?
June 10, 2024
*****4.5*****
This book wasn't exactly what I expected. First of all, when I read the back, I thought it said Virginia, not Vermont, and I was excited because the South is still mysterious to me, especially the mountain regions, so I was thinking I'd get to learn about a different way of life. Then, I realized it said Vermont, and I was disappointed. However, I still got to learn about a different way of life, one that remains mysterious and reminds me of books I've read about the South yet also contains so much familiarity as someone who lives in the Northeast also.
In feel, the book reminds me of To a God Unknown, Winesburg, Ohio, and, oddly, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. In the first parallel for me, it's the connectedness to the earth, the wildness, and the magic. These stories have far less impact without the principal character of the land. In the second parallel, it's the same location being a backdrop for all the stories and characters but profiling different types at different time periods and adding in connections, like the bar and its manager, Rita. For the third parallel, it's the fraught, complex, tense relationships between mothers and daughters without as much angst and with more love.
Overall, the thing that surprised me the most about these stories is how impactful they almost all were for me. The endings of each one, with maybe one exception, were so perfect, and they really made me stop to let the feelings settle and to think. I'm not a short story fan as a rule, largely because, in my opinion, 90% of short stories leave me feeling let down. I didn't feel that way at all with any of these stories. They each ended on a high note, so I wanted to read the next one, not feeling like the air left me, and everything is anticlimactic but feeling like each one ended at the right time and in the right way to leave me feeling like the inhale and not the exhale. The only reason I'm giving this book .5 star less than 5 is the profanity. There's too much for me, and I don't think most of it was necessary for the stories to work.
"Creek Dippers" is a good intro to the world into which MacArthur creates a peephole. It sets up important settings, connections, and themes.
"The Heart of the Woods" shows us important contrasts in types that inhabit this land. There are those who accept it as it is, and there are those who want to change it and bend it, domesticate it.
"Wings, 1989" has such a strong ending. I love the simplicity of this story and the conflicts and tension that emerge when someone is only half wild.
"Maggie in the Trees" got me. This is when I really got involved. The story is so complex and slow but also impactful on every page. I loved the ending.
"Karmann" was another one that really hit me. I love the relationships and the main character's voice. The ending is perfect.
"God's Country." Wow. This one stunned me. It's extremely complex and detailed with tons of backstory that make the present conflict even more layered. Again, that ending.
"Barred Owl" was okay to me. Definitely not one of my favorite stories but still interesting.
"Where Fields Try to Lie." This one really got me. The ending is so emotional.
"The Long Road Turns to Joy." Another one with such a strong ending. I love the action at the end. It brought tears to my eyes.
"Love Birds." This one is another really moving story that made me emotional.
And, finally, "The Women Where I'm From." This one has one of the best endings in my opinion and definitely made me cry and feel hope at the same time.
Overall, I really enjoyed this collection. I fell for the writing style, the richness of the setting, and the complexity of these people's lives. I strongly recommend this book if you're curious about Vermont (or Virginia...), and if you enjoy short stories that are told with energy, force, and clarity.
This book wasn't exactly what I expected. First of all, when I read the back, I thought it said Virginia, not Vermont, and I was excited because the South is still mysterious to me, especially the mountain regions, so I was thinking I'd get to learn about a different way of life. Then, I realized it said Vermont, and I was disappointed. However, I still got to learn about a different way of life, one that remains mysterious and reminds me of books I've read about the South yet also contains so much familiarity as someone who lives in the Northeast also.
In feel, the book reminds me of To a God Unknown, Winesburg, Ohio, and, oddly, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. In the first parallel for me, it's the connectedness to the earth, the wildness, and the magic. These stories have far less impact without the principal character of the land. In the second parallel, it's the same location being a backdrop for all the stories and characters but profiling different types at different time periods and adding in connections, like the bar and its manager, Rita. For the third parallel, it's the fraught, complex, tense relationships between mothers and daughters without as much angst and with more love.
Overall, the thing that surprised me the most about these stories is how impactful they almost all were for me. The endings of each one, with maybe one exception, were so perfect, and they really made me stop to let the feelings settle and to think. I'm not a short story fan as a rule, largely because, in my opinion, 90% of short stories leave me feeling let down. I didn't feel that way at all with any of these stories. They each ended on a high note, so I wanted to read the next one, not feeling like the air left me, and everything is anticlimactic but feeling like each one ended at the right time and in the right way to leave me feeling like the inhale and not the exhale. The only reason I'm giving this book .5 star less than 5 is the profanity. There's too much for me, and I don't think most of it was necessary for the stories to work.
"Creek Dippers" is a good intro to the world into which MacArthur creates a peephole. It sets up important settings, connections, and themes.
"The Heart of the Woods" shows us important contrasts in types that inhabit this land. There are those who accept it as it is, and there are those who want to change it and bend it, domesticate it.
"Wings, 1989" has such a strong ending. I love the simplicity of this story and the conflicts and tension that emerge when someone is only half wild.
"Maggie in the Trees" got me. This is when I really got involved. The story is so complex and slow but also impactful on every page. I loved the ending.
"Karmann" was another one that really hit me. I love the relationships and the main character's voice. The ending is perfect.
"God's Country." Wow. This one stunned me. It's extremely complex and detailed with tons of backstory that make the present conflict even more layered. Again, that ending.
"Barred Owl" was okay to me. Definitely not one of my favorite stories but still interesting.
"Where Fields Try to Lie." This one really got me. The ending is so emotional.
"The Long Road Turns to Joy." Another one with such a strong ending. I love the action at the end. It brought tears to my eyes.
"Love Birds." This one is another really moving story that made me emotional.
And, finally, "The Women Where I'm From." This one has one of the best endings in my opinion and definitely made me cry and feel hope at the same time.
Overall, I really enjoyed this collection. I fell for the writing style, the richness of the setting, and the complexity of these people's lives. I strongly recommend this book if you're curious about Vermont (or Virginia...), and if you enjoy short stories that are told with energy, force, and clarity.
February 10, 2017
First appeared at http://www.thenewdorkreviewofbooks.co...
At Book Expo America (BEA) last May, I had just finished fawning over getting my book signed by Richard Russo when a publicist sort of grabbed me and asked if I was interested in a slim volume of short stories titled Half Wild by a debut writer named Robin MacArthur. Sure, why not? It was one of those heart-wrenching parts of BEA where a super-talented (as I'd soon learn), but little-known author sat at her table by herself, while all the tables around her (Russo's was directly adjacent) had long lines.
When I got home (MacArthur, by the way, couldn't have been nicer!) I looked over the stories' descriptions and MacArthur's terrific inscription on my book — "For Greg, Enjoy these wild woods, back roads" — and made a mental note that I wouldn't just set this galleys aside so it'd be lost in a pile forever, but to keep it as a TBR priority. It took seven months, but I finally got to it. Super glad I did!
I realize that was a long walk to illustrate an instance of book serendipity, but I think the way I came to these stories actually enhanced how much I liked them. And like them, I did. They're really fantastic! MacArthur explores, in precise but not-precious prose, various characters' connections to their roots in rural Vermont.
"Love Birds" is about ex-hippies who have been married 47 years, live off the grid, can't see themselves anywhere else, and love their simple life (this story is one of my favorites).
"The Heart of The Woods" is a terrific a story about a woman who marries a rich man who flips distressed residential property to commercial real estate. Her father, a logger, is greatly disappointed with her life choices.
And the last story, my favorite in the collection, "The Women Where I'm From" ties a thematic bow on the book, as it follows a young woman named Hannah who lives in Seattle, but returns to Vermont to care for her cancer-stricken mother. Hannah is surprised by the pull her childhood home has over her and tries to decide whether to stay.
These elegant stories really resonated with me. I've actually never been to Vermont, but I do have a bit of a complicated relationship with the place I grew up. And that relationship to your roots is the real theme here. The setting of the Vermont woods is sort of just a bonus - atmospheric and, to me, a bit exotic even.
If you've followed this blog for any amount of time, you'll recognize it's rare that I post about short story collections. But I loved this collection — and I think most readers will too. Very highly recommended!
At Book Expo America (BEA) last May, I had just finished fawning over getting my book signed by Richard Russo when a publicist sort of grabbed me and asked if I was interested in a slim volume of short stories titled Half Wild by a debut writer named Robin MacArthur. Sure, why not? It was one of those heart-wrenching parts of BEA where a super-talented (as I'd soon learn), but little-known author sat at her table by herself, while all the tables around her (Russo's was directly adjacent) had long lines.
When I got home (MacArthur, by the way, couldn't have been nicer!) I looked over the stories' descriptions and MacArthur's terrific inscription on my book — "For Greg, Enjoy these wild woods, back roads" — and made a mental note that I wouldn't just set this galleys aside so it'd be lost in a pile forever, but to keep it as a TBR priority. It took seven months, but I finally got to it. Super glad I did!
I realize that was a long walk to illustrate an instance of book serendipity, but I think the way I came to these stories actually enhanced how much I liked them. And like them, I did. They're really fantastic! MacArthur explores, in precise but not-precious prose, various characters' connections to their roots in rural Vermont.
"Love Birds" is about ex-hippies who have been married 47 years, live off the grid, can't see themselves anywhere else, and love their simple life (this story is one of my favorites).
"The Heart of The Woods" is a terrific a story about a woman who marries a rich man who flips distressed residential property to commercial real estate. Her father, a logger, is greatly disappointed with her life choices.
And the last story, my favorite in the collection, "The Women Where I'm From" ties a thematic bow on the book, as it follows a young woman named Hannah who lives in Seattle, but returns to Vermont to care for her cancer-stricken mother. Hannah is surprised by the pull her childhood home has over her and tries to decide whether to stay.
These elegant stories really resonated with me. I've actually never been to Vermont, but I do have a bit of a complicated relationship with the place I grew up. And that relationship to your roots is the real theme here. The setting of the Vermont woods is sort of just a bonus - atmospheric and, to me, a bit exotic even.
If you've followed this blog for any amount of time, you'll recognize it's rare that I post about short story collections. But I loved this collection — and I think most readers will too. Very highly recommended!
November 22, 2024
Good god, I loved this collection so much, every single damn story. These are the exact types of stories I want to read, and I want to tell. Quiet, melancholy, riotous, heartbreaking, joyful stories where people are mostly alone, sometimes with others, often unseen, with moments of feeling seen, taking desperate stock of their lives, sometimes before it is too late.
"...feel the dangerous and frightening pull of some new, or old, kind of life--drunk, hopeless, pine-pitched--calling."
"...feel the dangerous and frightening pull of some new, or old, kind of life--drunk, hopeless, pine-pitched--calling."
November 10, 2019
3.5 stars for some sad, winsome, lonely stories of life in Vermont told by a number of different people connected through the areas they live in. Liked some and a few were very moving. Would recommend to old hippie types.
August 4, 2020
I was considering giving it a 3-3.5, but the short story “The Women Where I’m From” definitely bumped it up to a four!
May 25, 2022
Only read if you’re ready to get emotionally f-ed up- it’s a rough one but super addicting.
January 8, 2019
Being a woman from Vermont this collection of stories really touched me. I felt as if I knew the characters and places in each story. It was inspiring and heartbreaking. Loved every page.
February 26, 2017
Interesting short stories taking place in the woods of Vermont. Throwbacks to the 70's and hippies. Life at its most simple, but very complex. "The women where I'm from, that is. They're wild. Ridiculous."
September 8, 2016
Y'all, I loved this collection so much. I loved the interweaving of characters throughout different stories, and I loved the characters themselves. MacArthur writes male and female characters equally well. She writes ~human~ characters, you know?
Standout stories for me were "The Heart of the Woods," "Karmann," "God's Country," "The Long Road Turns to Joy," and the final story, "The Women Where I'm From."
My absolute favorite was "God's Country." It was very timely, as far as subject matter goes.
I really appreciated the way she handled the subject of war.
I mean, if this is Robin MacArthur's debut... I can't wait to see what she writes next.
Standout stories for me were "The Heart of the Woods," "Karmann," "God's Country," "The Long Road Turns to Joy," and the final story, "The Women Where I'm From."
My absolute favorite was "God's Country." It was very timely, as far as subject matter goes.
I really appreciated the way she handled the subject of war.
I mean, if this is Robin MacArthur's debut... I can't wait to see what she writes next.
November 7, 2016
An amazing debt from a brilliant young writer. Can't wait to read more from this author. I loved following the lives of the rural Vermonters through the woods of the mountains as they learned to navigate the fringe territory of their inner lives. The landscape comes alive as a character all her own, speaking through the trees and rugged vistas, wandering in riverbeds and through gardens, apple orchards and make-shift cabins. Each story unearths some part of the soul-heart-body of this place, each character struggles forth to make what needs to shine, shine, and what needs to come alive, breathe. Such beauty in the prose of this book.
June 13, 2016
Thank you Ecco Books for another awesome book!!!
Half Wild by Robin MacArthur is a book of short stories and that, in and of itself, is reason enough for me to read it. I love short stories and this book did not disappoint! The book felt like a love letter to Vermont, bittersweet, heartbreaking and full of longing. I really enjoyed how connected some of the stories were. Whether they were set in the same town or relatives of a narrator from a previous story. To me it made the characters feel even more real.
Half Wild by Robin MacArthur is a book of short stories and that, in and of itself, is reason enough for me to read it. I love short stories and this book did not disappoint! The book felt like a love letter to Vermont, bittersweet, heartbreaking and full of longing. I really enjoyed how connected some of the stories were. Whether they were set in the same town or relatives of a narrator from a previous story. To me it made the characters feel even more real.
August 21, 2016
Robin MacArthur writes about rural Vermont the way Kent Haruf creates his Holt, Colorado -- with spare, sensual prose that makes the land itself a pivotal character that runs through the lives of the people that live -- and struggle -- there. I don't know anyone like the half wild characters in these stories and I have never spent more than a few days in backwoods Vermont. Yet, each one of these eleven short stories broke my heart in some way. I love the writing and am eager to read more from this author.
April 27, 2022
This book could not be more Vermont, specifically rural southern Vermont, where I lived for a few transformative years. Like the place, these stories are beautiful and grim, obdurate as granite yet seductive. You hate it and you want to stay forever. I can't say if I liked the book, but it is stunningly real. I'll be looking for more from this author, who merges etheric storytelling with limpid prose, like a riffle of cold water over stone.
September 15, 2016
There's something about this book. It's so quiet, but it will break your heart just a little. It's about going home, or being home, or feeling not at home. It's all three. You, at once, want to disappear into a Vermont mountain town and run away from it as fast as you can. For anyone from that place that is too small for you.
August 14, 2016
Absolutely gorgeous prose. These stories are interconnected very effectively by place, theme, and some by families and friends/acquaintances. I suspect these characters and settings will stay with me for along time.
September 9, 2016
Wow! I can read these stories forever.....Amazing
October 20, 2016
Dreadful
Insipid and meandering effluvial prose. Terribly boring. A journey through someone else's therapy sessions, written down in something almost resembling a book.
Insipid and meandering effluvial prose. Terribly boring. A journey through someone else's therapy sessions, written down in something almost resembling a book.
Want to read
August 2, 2016Recommended by: WBUR here and now
Good gift for: pancake & pals
Good gift for: pancake & pals
September 3, 2016
Absolutely one of my favorites from this year!
June 3, 2018
After having read and enjoyed the author's first full length novel called Heart Spring Mountain I did some research on her career. I found that she had published this collection of short stories a few years before. I also found in a radio interview which she did that those stories provided her the opportunity to explore some themes and characters which were central to HSM. Thus, as is often the case with me I decided to read Half Wild: Stories to learn more about her world view and style of writing.
Although I am generally not a fan of short stories because of a lack of character development, MacArthur overcame this objection of mine in many respects. Despite their relative brevity in most of the stories she skillfully and poignantly portrayed people struggling with deep conflicts over such things as one's sense of belonging, fears of intimacy, the death of a loved one about whom the character felt ambivalence,etc. As was the case with HSM, the underbelly of rural Vermont is front and center in these stories: drug and/or alcohol abuse, domestic violence, racism, and people living in marginal circumstances, if not abject poverty, are presented. This is definitely not the Vt that tourists see. One could readily see kernels in these stories of what became HSM: two characters named Vale and Hazel, aging hippies living in poverty, marital and intergenerational conflicts resulting in feelings of alienation and fears of abandonment, characters for whom music played an important role in their lives, and the use of owls as part of the the storyline.
My other objection to short stories is that they typically end with very little, if any, closure. This happened in most of these stories. But MacArthur's character portrayals were so well done that I did not seem to mind the manner in which the stories ended. In many cases I came away thinking that the story could be a chapter in a novel in which more background and closure could be constructed.
I am by no means a convert to the short story. But this book confirmed that I will read some by an author like MacArthur whose talents as a novelist convince me that reading some of their short stories is at least worth a try. In this instance I was not disappointed.
For those who are interested, her interview can be heard at https://www.bookish.com/articles/robi...
Although I am generally not a fan of short stories because of a lack of character development, MacArthur overcame this objection of mine in many respects. Despite their relative brevity in most of the stories she skillfully and poignantly portrayed people struggling with deep conflicts over such things as one's sense of belonging, fears of intimacy, the death of a loved one about whom the character felt ambivalence,etc. As was the case with HSM, the underbelly of rural Vermont is front and center in these stories: drug and/or alcohol abuse, domestic violence, racism, and people living in marginal circumstances, if not abject poverty, are presented. This is definitely not the Vt that tourists see. One could readily see kernels in these stories of what became HSM: two characters named Vale and Hazel, aging hippies living in poverty, marital and intergenerational conflicts resulting in feelings of alienation and fears of abandonment, characters for whom music played an important role in their lives, and the use of owls as part of the the storyline.
My other objection to short stories is that they typically end with very little, if any, closure. This happened in most of these stories. But MacArthur's character portrayals were so well done that I did not seem to mind the manner in which the stories ended. In many cases I came away thinking that the story could be a chapter in a novel in which more background and closure could be constructed.
I am by no means a convert to the short story. But this book confirmed that I will read some by an author like MacArthur whose talents as a novelist convince me that reading some of their short stories is at least worth a try. In this instance I was not disappointed.
For those who are interested, her interview can be heard at https://www.bookish.com/articles/robi...
October 16, 2019
« Le cœur sauvage » de Robin Macarthur (224p)
Ed. Albin Michel
Bonjour les fous de lectures ....
Pour une fois, je vous parle d’un recueil de nouvelles.
Ce genre de lecture n’est pas ma tasse de thé, mais là, j’avoue avoir apprécié la majorité des textes présentés.
Toutes les nouvelles se passent dans le Vermont, un des plus petit état des U.S en majorité occupé par des forêts et voisin du Canada.
Nous allons croiser d’anciennes hippies, des bûcherons, des artistes, des ados un peu paumés et bien d’autres.
Nous plongeons dans un monde de marginaux où la solitude ne fait pas peur, fait partie de soi.
Nouvelles essentiellement de femmes où elles souffrent, gardent le silence , sont rebelles, sont abandonnées ...
Peu de violence mais également peu de tendresse.
On boit un peu, parfois trop, on se fond dans la nature, on se baigne nus dans les rivières glacées, on vit solitaire.
C’est la vie dans le Vermont.
Une vie sauvage impossible à dominer .
Une vie entre deux teintes ou on avance cahin-caha.
Robin Macarthur nous parle tendrement de son pays sans jamais tomber dans le pathos.
Un monde dur, où la poisse domine.
Une écriture toute en mélancolie à découvrir cet automne, au coin du feu.
Plongez-vous sans hésitation dans ce recueil où Robin Macarthur nous parle si bien « des femmes de chez elle »
Petit coup de cœur pour 2 nouvelles « là où les prés tentent d’exister » et « les femmes de chez moi »
Je serais presque réconciliée avec ce genre littéraire
Ed. Albin Michel
Bonjour les fous de lectures ....
Pour une fois, je vous parle d’un recueil de nouvelles.
Ce genre de lecture n’est pas ma tasse de thé, mais là, j’avoue avoir apprécié la majorité des textes présentés.
Toutes les nouvelles se passent dans le Vermont, un des plus petit état des U.S en majorité occupé par des forêts et voisin du Canada.
Nous allons croiser d’anciennes hippies, des bûcherons, des artistes, des ados un peu paumés et bien d’autres.
Nous plongeons dans un monde de marginaux où la solitude ne fait pas peur, fait partie de soi.
Nouvelles essentiellement de femmes où elles souffrent, gardent le silence , sont rebelles, sont abandonnées ...
Peu de violence mais également peu de tendresse.
On boit un peu, parfois trop, on se fond dans la nature, on se baigne nus dans les rivières glacées, on vit solitaire.
C’est la vie dans le Vermont.
Une vie sauvage impossible à dominer .
Une vie entre deux teintes ou on avance cahin-caha.
Robin Macarthur nous parle tendrement de son pays sans jamais tomber dans le pathos.
Un monde dur, où la poisse domine.
Une écriture toute en mélancolie à découvrir cet automne, au coin du feu.
Plongez-vous sans hésitation dans ce recueil où Robin Macarthur nous parle si bien « des femmes de chez elle »
Petit coup de cœur pour 2 nouvelles « là où les prés tentent d’exister » et « les femmes de chez moi »
Je serais presque réconciliée avec ce genre littéraire
January 5, 2024
Book #8 of 2022. "Half Wild" by Robin MacArthur. 3/5 rating.
This is a collection of short stories about different people in Vermont.
I picked this up because I'm trying to read more local authors. It also appealed to me with its ideas about the wild and its promise of talking about "hopes, dreams, hungers and fears". I was a little underwhelmed, though. Overall, the book was fine. There were some good stories, but a lot of sadness, a lot of hopelessness. I've read books before that absolutely tore me to shreds because of how depressing and sad they were ("A Little Life" comes to mind), but somehow, this book seemed to skirt these topics without confronting them which took away from the stories.
While there were some beautiful stories about the woods, about family, and about home in Vermont, I'm going to continue to search for one that I enjoy better.
This is a collection of short stories about different people in Vermont.
I picked this up because I'm trying to read more local authors. It also appealed to me with its ideas about the wild and its promise of talking about "hopes, dreams, hungers and fears". I was a little underwhelmed, though. Overall, the book was fine. There were some good stories, but a lot of sadness, a lot of hopelessness. I've read books before that absolutely tore me to shreds because of how depressing and sad they were ("A Little Life" comes to mind), but somehow, this book seemed to skirt these topics without confronting them which took away from the stories.
While there were some beautiful stories about the woods, about family, and about home in Vermont, I'm going to continue to search for one that I enjoy better.
March 19, 2017
I found this to be a great read in the current political climate, as the book achieves insight into rural America in a way a lot of people are trying and failing to accomplish right now. I originally rated this 3 stars, but upped to 4 after considering that most of the reason I didn't rate it higher initially is because short stories just aren't my thing. The stories themselves are great--dark, raw, rural. They are all different but also feel the same, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but did leave me missing the plot of a longer story. Would recommend, especially for those who love emotionally honest and dark stories exploring all the things that make people uncomfortable. I think fans of Dorothy Allison would like this author's work.
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