The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind

by David Guterson

By the author of "Snow Falling On Cedars", this collection of short stories are mainly narrated by older men, recounting the wrong turns and lost opportunities that have occurred in their lives. They remember their mistakes, their lies and their first loves with intense and lingering recollections.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Literature, American, Drama, Collections, Literary Fiction

181 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

David Guterson is an American novelist.

Reviews

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title suggests , this collection of ten short stories looks ahead to the future and back to the past. If there's any theme that unifies them, it's a sense of aloneness, not loneliness so much as a feeling of isolation shown in these words from "The Flower Garden," ". . . suddenly I felt more alone than I ever had, more desolate, more burdened by my own soul and who I was, however ineluctably . . ." This is the last story in the collection, about the breakup of a romance and aside from the first story about the beginning of a breakup of a marriage, all of the other stories are variations on this sense of aloneness.

Two of my favorites were ones about childhood; in "Moonwalk" the first person narrator talks about when he was 13 and his family moved to Seattle from a small town in Oregon. He had fantasies of becoming a great basketball player and would practice endlessly with his older brother until the day that his brother tore ligaments in his knee and stopped playing sports. A bond between them was broken and they developed their own interests. These events coincided with the first moonwalk and by juxtaposing this far off event with his personal life, a sense of a diminished outlook on life develops.

In "Aliens" the narrator, again first person, remembers Dan Wyman, a student he first met in a high school Auto Shop class. They're a slightly social maladjusted pair who befriend one another and hang out together. Their time together culminates in picking up a pair of girls and giving them a ride home. After some awkward sexual fumbling with the girls, they drive off by themselves. That's it - they drift apart. "No sudden falling off, just a gradual drift, currents dragging at us from different opposite directions." Ten years later the narrator runs into Wyman. He's older, different, his hair is beginning to recede, his body has thickened imperceptibly, and the story teller knows they no longer have much in common. That's how life often is, and Guterson captures the small descriptive details that make this point.

Two of the stories emphasize a brief period in a person's life where there is a real closeness and in each case it is between men who are on hunting or fishing trips.. "Wood Grouse on a High Promontory Overlooking Canada" made me think of Hemingway's Nick Adams fishing stories where the outside world of strife and war intrude. In Guterson's story, one of the individuals is a Viet Name vet. Guterson doesn't handle the situation as allusively as Hemingway, but there is the same feeling of something that is wrong. Gary has been in the war, his brother hasn't,, and their communication is imperfect. Gary says, though, "It's beautiful up here, I'm glad we came." So is his brother, but he adds, "I began to feel alone among all these mountains."

In "Three Hunters", the world of violence again intrudes into a peaceful fishing trip when a menacing hunter with a loaded gun threatens two teen-age fishermen. On returning home, one of them tells his mother what has happened, and how angry and frightened he was. Her response, "There are evil men in the world. Do you think you can change that, Roy?"
One other story, "Piranhas", has an oblique answer to that question. The world cannot be changed, obviously, but in this story, a twelve year boy who is feeling alienated from his parents , retreats into a hobby of collecting aquarium fish, specifically piranhas. Their flesh-eating capacity triggers a desire in him to control their violent behavior, but his parents make him get rid of these "strange" and "inappropriate" fish. He does, angrily, and in the darkest story in the collection, he fantasizes about getting rid of his parents as well.

It's a fine collection of short stories. Someone once said that they didn't read short stories much as characters disappear just as you're getting to know them, and you'll never see them again. That's true, but life itself largely lacks continuity, and in these stories a reader has the pleasure to seeing these characters at important junctures in their life. That's enough in itself.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

angels in the snow -2.5
opening day - 2.5
day of the moonwalk - 3
aliens - 3.5
wood grouse on a high promontory overlooking Canada - 4
piranhas - 2.75
three hunters - 2.75
American elm - 3
arcturus - 3.5
the flower garden - 4.25

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't like to talk about books for men and books for women. Books are for people, and if they open a window into a reality I know nothing about, I enjoy and learn.

However, David Guterson is such an American Midwest (?) dude. He writes about boys becoming men, men becoming old, old men becoming wise, men becoming fathers, fathers becoming sons again. Everyone coming a bit of age in a way.
And some stories really spoke to me - 2, I guess, of the 10 on offer. But I could not shake the feeling that most of these people I was reading about just weren't relevant to me. They hunt, they drink, they sport, they are very lonely and very male. The prose was nice, but the meaning with which maleness was imbued just didn't speak to me. I am not unhappy to have read this collection of short stories, but I won't rush to read more.

It's a man's world, I guess.

[Carla · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lover of short story collections, David Guterson does not disappoint. Noted more for his book Snow Falling on Cedars, he's written thought provoking, sometimes disturbing stories. Set mainly in the Pacific Northwest, and mostly about boys, men, and the transition from one to the other. Guterson has a way with words that I enjoy savouring. While Mr. Guterson has such incredible skill in descriptive landscape, in short story telling, he has had to use other skills that poignantly resonate with me in a leaner, more complex fashion. Well done!

[Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collection of short stories, published in 1989, from early in the career of treasured Pacific Northwest writer Guterson, who won the PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel, “Snow Falling On Cedars.” Like that novel, most of these stories are set in the Pacific Northwest. The stories are of varying quality. Guterson’s prose is wonderful. The stories address men’s lives, with themes including coming of age and emotional development, attraction and romance, sports, hunting and fishing. The stories remind me of themes from Hemingway’s short stories, but with better, more flowing, less sexist prose and a late 20th century perspective.

[Maciek · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable collection of short fiction by the author of "Snow Falling on Cedars". Since I'm a fan of the form I was delighted to read this volume. Even though Guterson struggles with theme and character (it was his debut) and the stories themselves are pretty simple, he has a knack of writing about the Pacific Northwest and these stories, slowly and leasurely paced, have a soothing effect. Most involve boys growing up and confronting life, so if that's your thing by all means give it a try.

[Melki · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have liked to rate this higher. The stories are beautiful - descriptive and evocative, full of sadness, longing, and regret. But nothing really pops out to make them stand above being just pretty words. The characters seem lifeless compared to their vividly-painted backgrounds, and this makes the stories ultimately...forgettable.

[Angela · Rating 1 out of 5]

I knew from the moment I saw it that I wouldn't enjoy this short story collection. Years ago, I had a friend who raved about Snow Falling on Cedars. Knowing my friend's taste, it was obvious that this book is beneath me (sorry not sorry). However...knowing my friend's taste, I thought the stories would be simple and inoffensive, and, therefore, possibly good for my grade 9 English class. I paid a dollar for this book at a thrift store and even that seems like a rip-off.

The stories are terrible. The writing is just so, so bad. I was looking for examples of literary devices while reading and didn't find any in the first four stories. It's goddamn bland, and not in a minimalist, thought-provoking way. Strangely, some of the last stories ("American Elm," "The Flower Garden") are dense and somewhat ornate, yet these stories aren't good, either. It's like Guterson thought, "Oh shit, I should try to be a better author! This is what good authors do, right?" The end result is still pathetically amateurish.

Now, it's not completely a waste of time. Some stories have good ideas. "Piranhas" shows the pointless cruelty that can arise from teenage angst. "American Elm" explores aging, mortality, and dying with dignity. And I did end up finding a story that I might use in class; "Wood Grouse on a High Promontory Overlooking Canada" is a story of two brothers on a hunting trip. There's nothing special about it, but it would be a good story to use when teaching about making inferences.

I never intended to read this book for pleasure...which is probably a good thing, because there is absolutely no joy in getting through these dull stories.

[Stefanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Guterson is one of my favorite authors. His short stories are nothing short of genius. Full of deep conversation and raw emotion, he manages to fill a few pages with more heartfelt writing than some authors can do in a complete novel.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories by the author of Snow Falling on Cedars. Wonderful descriptions of nature - forests, changing of seasons. Most are about young men (and some old men), some are dark and sad. Read it for the description power of the words.

[Andy Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed re-reading this collection of early David Guterson short stories written before Guterson became famous with his Snow Falling on Cedars.
My favorite was "Opening Day" which tells of three generations of men going to the opening day of duck hunting outside Moses Lake Washington. The high school aged boy's enthusiasm for an early start is restrained by his dad's and grandad's methodical preparation and reminisces about past duck hunts while the descriptions of the natural beauty become central to the story as shown by this quote.
"Marsh reeds, golden cattails, pockets of gray water as far as you can seen north and south.The sage desert, impossibly large, rolled away to the east and behind. While we watched a string of teal angled in, just where we'd had our set for so many years"
The story's ending, as they drive back to Seattle dropping the grandfather off at his home is as poignant telling of a passing of a generational torch as I've ever read.
"Day of the Moonwalk" is set on the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon during the time two brothers and parents are moving from Seaside Oregon to Seattle. Pick up basketball between the brothers and others illustrate the competitive relationships of that age, and Guterson's writing takes even the reader back to 1969.
"Aliens" is told by a man remembering his rebellious decision to break away from the academic classes that he excelled at to take an auto shop class. His haplessness is ridiculed by the others in the class and he doesn't fit in, but one auto student eventually befriends him and offers unsolicited advice about not looking to be "slumming."
"American Elm" is set in New England, a young high school student gets a job as an orderly in a nursing home and starts taking shortcuts to work. The property owner eventually confronts him and says he can work off the trespassing by helping him with a house project. Guterson deftly shows the independence and crustiness of an old man whose frail body is undermining that independence. The boy who narrates the story tells of the old man with a compassionate understanding including the interaction when the old man becomes a resident of the nursing home.
"The Flower Garden" recalls a summer romance of an unlikely high school couple, he's a baseball player whose skill earned a professional contract, she's an introverted book reader headed off to a top notch college. The romance includes starting a garden together. When the baseball player returns to the garden after the break up and the story ends with the adult narrator still haunted by the loneliness after the break up: " Years have passed, but still today-on buses going downtown, in restaurants booming with noise, on airplanes as they lift off, at weddings and at movies and at baseball games when those moments arrive and the field disappears and I find myself burrowing back in time, lost in myself as the game goes on-I have felt in my heart that same widening aloneness that buried me then: the loneliness that boys feel who are afraid of death and becoming men."
There are other great stories in this collection that will take will wistfully take you back in time

[David Curry · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Guterson’s 1989 debut collection of short stories, THE COUNTRY AHEAD OF US, THE COUNTRY BEHIND, is replete with memorable moments. In “Opening Day,” a grandfather, a father and a boy are on a duck hunting expedition. As they come to a favorite place, we get this from the grandfather: “There it is,” Pop said. “Damn.”



That’s immediately followed by this: “Marsh reeds, golden cattails, pockets of gray water for as far as you could see north and south. The sage desert, impossibly large, rolled away to the east and behind. While we watched a string teal angled in, just where we’d had our set so many years.”

The natural world of the Pacific Northwest is a constant presence in most of these 10 stories, just as it is in Guterson’s celebrated subsequent novel SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS. By contrast, in “Day of the Moonwalk.” in which a family moves from an outlying Oregon town to urban Seattle, we get “a claustrophobic, overpaved city park.”

Throughout these decidedly masculine narratives, Guterson traces the inarticulate aspirations, struggles and losses of boys and men. In the shortest story (five pages), “Wood Grouse on a High Promontory Overlooking Canada,” two young brothers, one of them a Vietnam veteran, take comfort that in each other ”at least we’ve got someone to talk to.”

I like feeling that the writers with whose work I spend time know what they’re talking about. Guterson’s grasp of his place, materials and characters is sure, and his language— always vivid, sometimes visceral— complements that sureness. From “Three Hunters”: “The dust made my nostrils tighten up.”

In story after story, the calm assurance of Guterson’s prose invites you right in. “The Flower Garden” opens with this: “When I was young — seventeen — I had a paper route which I remember as a meandering through early summer, a ritual pilgrimage along old broad streets beneath maples just shooting out a soft haze of fresh buds.” I was ready to go on reading up to that story’s breathtaking ending.

The story oh the story I would nominate for the anthologies is “American Elm.”

[Schyler Conaway · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I was fifteen—basically an unattractive boy with pimples, in an overcoat. It was my first kiss: a girl named Joan. Nineteen-seventy-two. I recall ineluctably the surprisingly bad smell of it. Her mouth tasted terrible, like seaweed, like half-digested wine. So this is it, I kept thinking. Her tongue asserted its way into my mouth and then lay there like a piece of slimy rope. And I felt nothing, no desire for her: I couldn’t feel her through the thickness of my overcoat, or breathe in the actuality of who she was. We touched only because we both hated ourselves; and so we were unable to feel each other. There was nothing either beautiful or easy about this. I began to feel I had a ruined forever a moment that should have been fondly memorable. In adolescence it seems as if life might reveal itself only at the most poignant moments. But somehow these never arrive. Constantly consumed by small grievances of personality, we remain immune to their coming. We can’t fathom anything finally, not love, not joy, not the truth of some other. Not the stirring of the spirit by the touch of the body. Nothing.”

[Inga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Als Autor wurde David Guterson bekannt durch seinen Roman Schnee, der auf Zedern fällt (1994). Die Kurzgeschichtensammlung Das Land vor uns, das Land hinter uns erschien bereits 1989.

Die Protagonisten der Kurzgeschichten sind allesamt männlich und beschäftigen sich auch oft mit "männlichen" Dingen wie Sport oder Jagd. Dem Genre entsprechend treffen wir sie an einem Wendepunkt ihres Lebens an, einige der Geschichten arbeiten mit Rückblenden, denn die Erinnerungen an das Vergangene (das Land hinter uns) erhalten plötzlich Relevanz für das Jetzige oder Zukünftige (das Land vor uns).
Wie es bei solchen Sammlungen immer der Fall ist, haben mich einige der Geschichten mehr angesprochen als andere. Gemein haben sie, dass sie eher bedrückend wirken. Unfall, Trennung und Tod sind allgegenwärtig, einige der Geschichten sind sogar bedrohlich oder psychisch beängstigend. Dafür, dass ich kein großer Short Story Fan bin, hat mich Das Land vor uns, das Land hinter uns durchaus fasziniert und bei der Stange gehalten. Für Freunde des Genres sicherlich empfehlenswert.

[L. G. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was.... a book.

I don't really know what to say about it, it just didn't grip me I guess. This is a collection of short stories about boys and/or men that have things happen to them. From meeting hunters out in a forest to talking about hooking up during a Christmas get-together. To me, this book just felt mundane. The writing style in some of the stories didn't help either, it was way too description-heavy without anything actually being said. When I ended most of these stories I wondered what even the point was of including them, and that's not a good sign. Some stories were intriguing like 'Piranhas' and 'Arcturus' but all the rest was mediocre at best.

Long story short, I wouldn't bother. There are way, way better short stories out there.

[KB · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up a copy of this book because I recognized the Author's name and had really enjoyed reading *Snow Falling on Cedars* years ago. This is a collection of short stories, which I did not enjoy the same way. To be fair, I only read three of the ten stories: #1 - Angels in the Snow, #5 - Wood Grouse on a High Promontory Overlooking Canada, and #10 - The Flower Garden). I found them all to be depressing, but especially Wood Grouse. The overwhelming theme seems to be loneliness - specifically that of boys and men. I don't think this is a bad collection of stories, just not for me. For people who don't become saddened easily (or don't mind feeling sad), this might be a great read.

[Lori Bamber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Something about each of these short stories just meshed with the pace and cadence with which I look at the world, and then took me further than I'd usually go. The characters are deeply flawed, and deeply masculine, and I learned a lot about young men that I wish I'd known when I was also young.

(I almost gave up three-quarters of the way through the first story. Don't.)

Ultimately, this is a book about the way the world teaches men not to speak, not to acknowledge and manage their feeling, and then what happens next. And it was written in 1989, long before "toxic masculinity" was a thing.

I'm grateful to have found it, and look forward to reading it again.

[Joe Fruscione · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit uneven (as short story collections can be) but good overall. Guterson’s prose is clear and accessible, and the stories are rich in emotion, memory, and a sense of place. A throughline in the collection is the passage of time: often older people looking back on their youth and young adulthood.

My quick ranking of the 10 stories:

Solid: “Three Hunters,” “Angels in the Snow,” “Aliens,” “The Flower Garden”

Ok: “Piranhas,” “Arcturus,” “Wood Grouse...”, “Day of the Moonwalk”

Meh: “American Elm,” “Opening Day”

[Helena · Rating 4 out of 5]

My edition seems to be only the five first stories of this collection:
Angels in the snow
Opening day
Day of the moonwalk
Aliens
Wood grouse on a high promontory overlooking Canada

This was the first book by Guterson for me. I liked the melancholic stories about boys and men, the descriptions of old and new generations were touching.

[Darren Shaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this collection very much. Each selection is somewhat melancholy, and each offers its own perspective on loneliness and isolation. It isn’t really a ‘sad’ collection, though. It’s more contemplative and introspective. The prose is powerful, and each story offers something memorable or moving. Recommended.

[Tanya Carper · Rating 3 out of 5]

These touching short stories by the author of "Snow Falling on Cedars" are about old age and family generations and friendships. Many of them are set in the sage country of the Columbia Basin in eastern Washington State and so the places, roads and scenarios are very familiar to me since I grew up in this desert farmland. But I find the stories quite sad, not uplifting, and lacking resolution.

[Gerri · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag for me. A few I didn't connect with at all. Many were only a 3, a few were a 4.

Mainly themed around a young boy coming of age. Settings just didn't always click with me. Might be aimed at a different type of reader than I.

Still, I did find the poetic prose now and then that I have enjoyed in Guterson's other writings.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book of short stories. Though the writing was good, the stories didn't make much of an impression. Many of them were just depressing.

[Agosto2010 fermare l'esecuzione di Ahmadreza Djala · Rating 3 out of 5]

Racconti all'aria aperta

[Joseph Youren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant at times. Small snapshots of events that signal critical changes. Some looking back. Others signaling the future. All are about men.

[WF · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked "The flower garden" the most.

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful prose. Stories of the poignancy of ordinary life and the relationships we have with each other.

[Richard Buckley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ten easy reading short stories, which in the spirit of Snow Falling On Cedars, subtlety capture the unconscious connections between PNW nature and human emotion.

[Chloe Johns · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essentially a group of short stories, but I didn't really connect with any of them.

[Sheila · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my favourite book of the author. I found the stories sad.