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Les Femmes de Heart Spring Mountain
Août 2011. L'ouragan Irene s'abat sur le Vermont, laissant derrière lui le chaos et la désolation. Loin de là, à La Nouvelle-Orléans, Vale apprend que sa mère a disparu lors du passage de la tempête. Cela fait longtemps que la jeune femme a tourné le dos à sa famille, mais cette nouvelle ne lui laisse d'autre choix que de rentrer chez elle, à Heart Spring Mountain.
Elle y retrouve celles qui ont bercé son enfance : la vieille Hazel qui, seule dans sa ferme, perd la mémoire, et Deb, restée fidèle à ses idéaux hippies. Mais si elle est venue là dans le seul but de retrouver sa mère, c'est aux secrets des générations de femmes qui l'ont précédée que Vale va se confronter, réveillant son attachement féroce à cette terre qu'elle a tant voulu fuir.
Après Le Coeur sauvage, un recueil de nouvelles unanimement salué par la critique et les libraires, Robin MacArthur signe, d'une écriture pure et inspirée par la nature sauvage du Vermont, un émouvant premier roman sur le lien à la terre natale, et offre une réflexion lumineuse sur l'avenir de notre planète.
Elle y retrouve celles qui ont bercé son enfance : la vieille Hazel qui, seule dans sa ferme, perd la mémoire, et Deb, restée fidèle à ses idéaux hippies. Mais si elle est venue là dans le seul but de retrouver sa mère, c'est aux secrets des générations de femmes qui l'ont précédée que Vale va se confronter, réveillant son attachement féroce à cette terre qu'elle a tant voulu fuir.
Après Le Coeur sauvage, un recueil de nouvelles unanimement salué par la critique et les libraires, Robin MacArthur signe, d'une écriture pure et inspirée par la nature sauvage du Vermont, un émouvant premier roman sur le lien à la terre natale, et offre une réflexion lumineuse sur l'avenir de notre planète.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 9, 2018
226 people are currently reading
2488 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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 195 reviews
April 12, 2018
4.5 This is the kind of book I best like to read. Quiet books that tell the story of land,, nature and the strong people who are tied to this place. The mountains of Vermont, the book begins with a hurricane and heroin. Bonnie has just shot up when the hurricane hits, her daughter n New Orleans, making a living as a barista and part time dancer. She receives a phone call that her mother is missing, and leaves immediately for home.
Strong women, unforgettable women, flawed women and the generations that came before them all calling this place home. A land that has witnessed their secrets their betrayals and has kept them for a long time. Vale will return to a place and it's people that is in her blood. In her quest to find her mother she will uncover secrets kept, and those she loved changed. Older, but still full of love, want and need. A wonderful book of time and place.
The novel goes back and forth in time, narrated by the different women who are family, make this place their home. I loved the way this was written, loved the meanings behind the words. Loved the sense of place and family. We learn the history of the women, share their secrets, see their flaws and come to admire them anyway. Such wonderful characters though some don't live to have a full life, they still are remembered, still leave their mark. If you like the novels of Amy Greene or the novel Mercy Snow, then you will love this as I did.
ARC from Edelweiss.
Strong women, unforgettable women, flawed women and the generations that came before them all calling this place home. A land that has witnessed their secrets their betrayals and has kept them for a long time. Vale will return to a place and it's people that is in her blood. In her quest to find her mother she will uncover secrets kept, and those she loved changed. Older, but still full of love, want and need. A wonderful book of time and place.
The novel goes back and forth in time, narrated by the different women who are family, make this place their home. I loved the way this was written, loved the meanings behind the words. Loved the sense of place and family. We learn the history of the women, share their secrets, see their flaws and come to admire them anyway. Such wonderful characters though some don't live to have a full life, they still are remembered, still leave their mark. If you like the novels of Amy Greene or the novel Mercy Snow, then you will love this as I did.
ARC from Edelweiss.
November 23, 2017
Complex characters, complicated relationships, women living seemingly simple , quiet lives in the woods. A narrative structure that can pose at first a challenge, trying to keep tract of the characters in the present and past since there are multiple time lines, multiple narratives. Yet I enjoyed the challenge and found myself vested in them. In this story of this place called Heart Spring Mountain and the family who lives there or have left there, the writing is lovely from these introspective narratives of several women and one man . You do have to read with care and make sure to look at the beginning of each chapter, which tells us the person and date . I fell right into their journeys up to and sometimes away from Heart Mountain, but I admit that I had to take some notes until I got further into it.
Vale returns to Vermont looking for her drug addicted mother who went missing during Tropical Storm Irene. After seeing an old family photograph, she also begins searching for information about her family, the past . The reader becomes privy to this family history through the narratives of the past as Vale slowly discovers things we already know or surmise. There secrets and deceits and a haunting revelation of a Eugenics program in Vermont's history.
I won't go into detail about the names and times because it would be more meaningful if you read this to discover them yourself. I definitely recommend this debut novel, this story of women who in so many ways have a connection to the land. They discover their connection to it, to each other, to their history. There is definitely a message here about global warming and natural disasters. I don’t mind the message and I got it very early on but I think the author didn’t have very much faith in the reader as there are a few too many mentions of natural disasters in various places in the world . BUT, a minor issue because I really enjoyed everything else about it, so 4 stars .
I received an advanced copy of this book from Ecco/HarperCollins through Edelweiss.
February 28, 2018
Tropical Storm Irene has hit Vermont in 2011, rural areas are all torn up, and a woman named Bonnie, a heroin addict has gone missing. Her daughter Vale, who has been living in New Orleans for eight years, comes back home to Vermont and Heart Spring Mountain, the place that her ancestors have built their homes and lived since the 1800’s, to look for her. Vale reconnects with family and learns a lot of their history and secrets.
The book goes back and forth in time, through three generations of women in her family.
I really enjoyed this book!
The book goes back and forth in time, through three generations of women in her family.
I really enjoyed this book!
April 1, 2018
"Hurricanes and heroin. Flooding and Fentanyl." A good depiction of what has happened to this land and some of its inhabitants.
The place is Vermont and it has been recently hit by Hurricane Irene. A doped up mother has gone missing -last seen walking along the river in the storm, arms outstretched.
A daughter comes home in the search for her. The decades of the women who have lived here, Heart Spring Mountain, come to life.
The struggles, the challenges. Women tied to the land, finding themselves; their history. Their pain shared through generations. What comes out of a storm are answers to questions long forgotten. Wounds can heal for some and will remain raw and open for others. Here on this mountain, each woman finds her truth throughout the chaos Mother Nature churns.
This one follows 4 generations of women. The depth of these characters; the quiet that accompanies loss and the loneliness.
"When you have learned about love, you have learned about God".
Beautiful. 4.5⭐️
The place is Vermont and it has been recently hit by Hurricane Irene. A doped up mother has gone missing -last seen walking along the river in the storm, arms outstretched.
A daughter comes home in the search for her. The decades of the women who have lived here, Heart Spring Mountain, come to life.
The struggles, the challenges. Women tied to the land, finding themselves; their history. Their pain shared through generations. What comes out of a storm are answers to questions long forgotten. Wounds can heal for some and will remain raw and open for others. Here on this mountain, each woman finds her truth throughout the chaos Mother Nature churns.
This one follows 4 generations of women. The depth of these characters; the quiet that accompanies loss and the loneliness.
"When you have learned about love, you have learned about God".
Beautiful. 4.5⭐️
April 8, 2021
Beautiful novel -- (Thank you Tara)!
Right now, my belly is full from lunch (peanut butter toast).
Its so pretty outside --I'll return later -- (stepping into our garden for a little more daytime sunshine)
but wonderful novel, to 'read' (Audiobook wasn't the best format --even though the narrator was very good)
It was easier to follow the changing POV-narrators - the time period-changes - the experience of each of the characters, (the owl, too), the story, the generations of time, place, the 'women', the men, the land, the atmosphere, the nature descriptions, and the lovely passionate writing!
"Every Bird is an Omen...........whether you know it or not"!!
Back with a review soon!
UPDATE REVIEW....
“Heart Spring Mountain”, a debut novel, by Robin MacArthur, was first published in 2018. I remember wanting to read it when it first came out. I even downloaded the ebook a few years ago, then forgot I had it.
Goodreads friend, and wonderful author, Tara Masih, recently read this book, too, then sent me a message suggesting I do the same.
Other positive reviews besides Tara’s, is Cheri’s, Diane, and Angela.
Having forgotten I owned the ebook, I downloaded the audiobook from Overdrive. After listening to the first few characters, I switched to reading the ebook.
The audiobook was good... the voice narrator is great....[read by Susanne Elise Freeman]....but it was the type of historical fiction novel where I knew I’d benefit by taking extra time to experience the changing time periods, and changing narrators.
It was a little tricky - at first - sorting out who was who....but soon it all comes together, ‘vividly’....and soon I lost myself into this world with well defined characters...with language and beauty to savor... reminding me of why I love fiction storytelling. It’s mostly a story driven by female characters ( so what’s not to liked?)...yet the few men serve purpose as well.
The setting is on a hillside in Vermont where family has lived for 200 years.
I’ve always wanted to visit Vermont and this story re-confirmed it. (Alli, if you are reading this...I’m thinking of you).
I loved this quote I read in an interview with Robin McArthur.
She says:
“We need to come together, as the characters in this book do, in the most old fashion and essential of ways. With fire. And music. And soup and bread and wine”
Who does not feel her truthful words - deeply - especially since the COVID-19 pandemic?
I’ve been thinking about this novel a lot. The hurricane itself created a shaky foundation....but the storytelling builds with the strength of the characters....balancing humanity — ( our relationships and history), —
past, present, and future — with the natural world we live....it’s woods, wilderness, the owls, birds, peacocks, coyotes, rivers, mother-earth and all the landscape around us.
...Lena, for example, was an eccentric cabin-living-woman who died shorty after her daughter Bonnie was born in 1956. (Lena doesn’t start the story - but her chapters added environmental history understanding of family history, (secrets come out later), and flavor, to the rural mountain farm land of Vermont... “Heart Spring Mountain”.
Lena lived with an owl, named Otie. Learning about ‘Otie’s’ talents was quite charming.
...Bonnie gave birth to her daughter, Vale in 1973. We first learn about Bonnie from Vale.
Vale had haunting memories about her mother, and still felt anger towards her.
When it was Vale’s sixteenth birthday, Bonnie was sitting in a bathtub shooting a needle into her arm.
Growing up with an single mother, addicted to opioid, (a real disease), and the emotional turmoil intensity for both mother and daughter, had to be excruciating painful.
Val had been estranged from Bonnie, completely for about a year.....and had not been back home for eight.
I keep bumping into the theme: estrangement, a topic that weighs heavy on my own heart.
However....back to ‘this’ story....(with many interesting aspects: short chapters, emotional tautness, tragedy, family connections, the land itself that comes breathlessly alive, and the poetic prose) .... Val bolted right after high school.....left Vermont, her mom, her Aunt Deb, and other locals - with no intention of ever returning.
We first meet Val when it’s 2011, who was now living in New Orleans....
working in a bar, and stripping twice a week to pay her bills.
Val was watching the bar news of Hurricane Irene, in Vermont, while working.
I was thinking that Vale must have survived the New Orleans hurricane in 2005.....and how ironic & symbolic that the Hurricane in Vermont - was to Vale’s estrangement with her mother and her childhood home.
There really was an unthinkable destructive tropical hurricane in Vermont, in 2011...which some of my Vermont friends must remember....(thinking of Alli) ....but it’s the 2005 Hurricane in New Orleans I most remember.
So, I googled Hurricane Irene ....and ‘wow’ ...it really was a horrific hurricane. I’m not sure why I forgot....I’m sure I read the news....but....
‘senior moments’ of forgetfulness....I took the time to read up on it more.
It caused $733 million in damage— massive floods —and was the sixth-costliest Hurricane in American history.
Author, Robin MacArthur is a third generation Vermonter, and really does live and work on a farm, in Vermont. She built her own house!
The knowledge and experience she brings to this historical novel, is filled with personal, historical, and literary merit.
There was so much to love about this novel....
.....other characters I haven’t mentioned....history, music, (David Bowie or The Bee Gees, anyone?), exploration, snooping out truths, a little political and climate change examination, etc.
But perhaps it’s a good time to share a excerpt - sample of the lovely writing...
hoping to entice other readers to choose “Heart Spring Mountain”. I was late to it myself ... but it’s timeless and relevant for today.
It’s great to see worthy books get new revitalized life...
And this - quite extraordinary - novel is worthy to put into the hands of fiction readers:
“All that rain. The torn-up roads. And Bonnie is missing.
Hazel hasn’t told Deb, who comes every morning and every evening since the storm to check on her, that she is afraid. That she can feel death like a bear lurking at the edge of her fields.
“She wants to chase that beer with a broom, her scythe, her tractor. She doesn’t want to die. What will happen to this house and this land when she dies? Who will care for this mountain, as she has?
Heart Spring Mountain, the place her great-great- grandfather, Ezekiel Wood, and his wife Ziporah, settled in 1803, a man who walked for three days with a horse and an ox and a wagon from Cornwall, Connecticut, until he came to a place where no one else lived, a place no one had yet claimed: a piece of land with a brook running through it and a south-sloping hill, springs scattered throughout the bedrock, little white flowers called bloodroot. How do you choose a house site? The way one has always chosen a place to live: water, white pines, land you can dig with a shovel. Higher ground, above flood-plain. He chose this slope and Hazel is happy for it. She has lived every one of her ninety years here and is sure Ezekiel chose the perfect spot: the spot that catches sun earliest in the morning and sits downhill of the deepest spring. In August when the neighbors’ well runs dry, spring water still trickles through the pipes into Hazel’s basement and into the roadside spring down the hill, too. Eternal water; Heart Spring he named it”.
Lots of beauty, power, and serious insights.
Right now, my belly is full from lunch (peanut butter toast).
Its so pretty outside --I'll return later -- (stepping into our garden for a little more daytime sunshine)
but wonderful novel, to 'read' (Audiobook wasn't the best format --even though the narrator was very good)
It was easier to follow the changing POV-narrators - the time period-changes - the experience of each of the characters, (the owl, too), the story, the generations of time, place, the 'women', the men, the land, the atmosphere, the nature descriptions, and the lovely passionate writing!
"Every Bird is an Omen...........whether you know it or not"!!
Back with a review soon!
UPDATE REVIEW....
“Heart Spring Mountain”, a debut novel, by Robin MacArthur, was first published in 2018. I remember wanting to read it when it first came out. I even downloaded the ebook a few years ago, then forgot I had it.
Goodreads friend, and wonderful author, Tara Masih, recently read this book, too, then sent me a message suggesting I do the same.
Other positive reviews besides Tara’s, is Cheri’s, Diane, and Angela.
Having forgotten I owned the ebook, I downloaded the audiobook from Overdrive. After listening to the first few characters, I switched to reading the ebook.
The audiobook was good... the voice narrator is great....[read by Susanne Elise Freeman]....but it was the type of historical fiction novel where I knew I’d benefit by taking extra time to experience the changing time periods, and changing narrators.
It was a little tricky - at first - sorting out who was who....but soon it all comes together, ‘vividly’....and soon I lost myself into this world with well defined characters...with language and beauty to savor... reminding me of why I love fiction storytelling. It’s mostly a story driven by female characters ( so what’s not to liked?)...yet the few men serve purpose as well.
The setting is on a hillside in Vermont where family has lived for 200 years.
I’ve always wanted to visit Vermont and this story re-confirmed it. (Alli, if you are reading this...I’m thinking of you).
I loved this quote I read in an interview with Robin McArthur.
She says:
“We need to come together, as the characters in this book do, in the most old fashion and essential of ways. With fire. And music. And soup and bread and wine”
Who does not feel her truthful words - deeply - especially since the COVID-19 pandemic?
I’ve been thinking about this novel a lot. The hurricane itself created a shaky foundation....but the storytelling builds with the strength of the characters....balancing humanity — ( our relationships and history), —
past, present, and future — with the natural world we live....it’s woods, wilderness, the owls, birds, peacocks, coyotes, rivers, mother-earth and all the landscape around us.
...Lena, for example, was an eccentric cabin-living-woman who died shorty after her daughter Bonnie was born in 1956. (Lena doesn’t start the story - but her chapters added environmental history understanding of family history, (secrets come out later), and flavor, to the rural mountain farm land of Vermont... “Heart Spring Mountain”.
Lena lived with an owl, named Otie. Learning about ‘Otie’s’ talents was quite charming.
...Bonnie gave birth to her daughter, Vale in 1973. We first learn about Bonnie from Vale.
Vale had haunting memories about her mother, and still felt anger towards her.
When it was Vale’s sixteenth birthday, Bonnie was sitting in a bathtub shooting a needle into her arm.
Growing up with an single mother, addicted to opioid, (a real disease), and the emotional turmoil intensity for both mother and daughter, had to be excruciating painful.
Val had been estranged from Bonnie, completely for about a year.....and had not been back home for eight.
I keep bumping into the theme: estrangement, a topic that weighs heavy on my own heart.
However....back to ‘this’ story....(with many interesting aspects: short chapters, emotional tautness, tragedy, family connections, the land itself that comes breathlessly alive, and the poetic prose) .... Val bolted right after high school.....left Vermont, her mom, her Aunt Deb, and other locals - with no intention of ever returning.
We first meet Val when it’s 2011, who was now living in New Orleans....
working in a bar, and stripping twice a week to pay her bills.
Val was watching the bar news of Hurricane Irene, in Vermont, while working.
I was thinking that Vale must have survived the New Orleans hurricane in 2005.....and how ironic & symbolic that the Hurricane in Vermont - was to Vale’s estrangement with her mother and her childhood home.
There really was an unthinkable destructive tropical hurricane in Vermont, in 2011...which some of my Vermont friends must remember....(thinking of Alli) ....but it’s the 2005 Hurricane in New Orleans I most remember.
So, I googled Hurricane Irene ....and ‘wow’ ...it really was a horrific hurricane. I’m not sure why I forgot....I’m sure I read the news....but....
‘senior moments’ of forgetfulness....I took the time to read up on it more.
It caused $733 million in damage— massive floods —and was the sixth-costliest Hurricane in American history.
Author, Robin MacArthur is a third generation Vermonter, and really does live and work on a farm, in Vermont. She built her own house!
The knowledge and experience she brings to this historical novel, is filled with personal, historical, and literary merit.
There was so much to love about this novel....
.....other characters I haven’t mentioned....history, music, (David Bowie or The Bee Gees, anyone?), exploration, snooping out truths, a little political and climate change examination, etc.
But perhaps it’s a good time to share a excerpt - sample of the lovely writing...
hoping to entice other readers to choose “Heart Spring Mountain”. I was late to it myself ... but it’s timeless and relevant for today.
It’s great to see worthy books get new revitalized life...
And this - quite extraordinary - novel is worthy to put into the hands of fiction readers:
“All that rain. The torn-up roads. And Bonnie is missing.
Hazel hasn’t told Deb, who comes every morning and every evening since the storm to check on her, that she is afraid. That she can feel death like a bear lurking at the edge of her fields.
“She wants to chase that beer with a broom, her scythe, her tractor. She doesn’t want to die. What will happen to this house and this land when she dies? Who will care for this mountain, as she has?
Heart Spring Mountain, the place her great-great- grandfather, Ezekiel Wood, and his wife Ziporah, settled in 1803, a man who walked for three days with a horse and an ox and a wagon from Cornwall, Connecticut, until he came to a place where no one else lived, a place no one had yet claimed: a piece of land with a brook running through it and a south-sloping hill, springs scattered throughout the bedrock, little white flowers called bloodroot. How do you choose a house site? The way one has always chosen a place to live: water, white pines, land you can dig with a shovel. Higher ground, above flood-plain. He chose this slope and Hazel is happy for it. She has lived every one of her ninety years here and is sure Ezekiel chose the perfect spot: the spot that catches sun earliest in the morning and sits downhill of the deepest spring. In August when the neighbors’ well runs dry, spring water still trickles through the pipes into Hazel’s basement and into the roadside spring down the hill, too. Eternal water; Heart Spring he named it”.
Lots of beauty, power, and serious insights.
April 6, 2021
Returning home in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene, August of 2011, a young woman named Vale leaves her job at a bar in New Orleans to search for, and hopefully find, her mother Bonnie, who has not been seen since the storm.
They haven’t seen each other in years, Vale can’t even remember the last time she had spoken to Bonnie, and yet when she hears that her mother is missing she doesn’t hesitate to pack what few things she has and head to Vermont. Her hometown, although she can’t remember what it feels like to be there.
And then she arrives, and sees bits and pieces of her old life, the places she used to frequent, some changed with the destruction brought by the storm, some unearthed by the storm. The people, she’d left them behind long ago, and yet there is this strong pull she feels when she begins to visit the family still there. The memories flood through her as time passes, each day it seems another thing she finds takes her back along the trails of her life there, all their lives. The people she loved, those that loved her back, those that couldn’t love her in the way she could recognize as love, or even as their best effort at love.
And when she returns to Heart Spring Mountain, she is drawn to her family more as she discovers stories she never knew about them, and we are able to hear from other family members in different times that offer enlightening insights into gaps in the family lore that Vale grew up with. These women have their own perspectives, their own stories to tell over the years, from the 1950’s to 2011, the year of Tropical Storm Irene. Each of their unique views on this one place held by her family all these years, one a widow living on a farm, another a former member of a commune, a woman with a wounded, damaged owl. Stories that have been hidden, so long buried in plain sight, are brought to light.
There is also the pull of the land which is strong, in this case it is family land long owned, but it goes beyond that. It is the place where these lives were lived, their stories grew from day-to-day lives just being lived to unearthed stories that are attached to a special place and time; the stories are part of the land, taking root and living in this timeless soil.
This is not a book one can become complacent about while reading as it does shift in time and from one narrator to another – however, if you remember to look, the narrator and era are noted at the beginning of each chapter.
The writing is often lovely, especially in the imagery of the rural Vermont landscape, along with the stories of these people who have carved out a life there for generation upon generation. Heart Spring Mountain covers quite a bit of emotional territory without feeling overly gloomy; there are many moments of joy and hope that help to add a tenderness and maybe even sweetness. Hope is almost like a silent character in this debut novel, always present, but sometimes overlooked in all the rushing about in Vale’s search for her mother.
In the process of the search for Vale’s mother, she finds more than she bargained for, and a long-hidden family secret is slowly brought to light.
Published: 09 Jan 2018
Many thanks for the ARC provided by Echo / HarperCollins
March 29, 2021
"What does hope feel like in the body? Cool air moving through. An electric charge."
I want to meet this author, sit down in a small cafe in a small town over a steaming cup of tea, and just talk...MacArthur poured her whole heart and soul into this debut novel, and you can feel it on every page. While I loved the setting (rural Vermont during different decades), what captured me most were the intimate exchanges she so deftly creates between her characters. Spoken and unspoken, physical, allegorical, mystical, sexual.
Underneath this is the violence of the earth breaking apart in floods and other natural disasters due to global warming. And the treatment and bias toward indigenous peoples. It's not an easy book to read, but an important one.
Vale, one of many female characters, but the main one, at one point calls out:
' "Find me!" Guttural. Loud. She has spent her entire adult life learning how to be alone." '
This is the undercurrent of the family saga. These hardy women are battered, broken, unique, but somehow rise above, each trying so hard to find any form of love, and to be found. "You get used to recognizing the impermanence of the ground, the trees, the walls, your own skin."
There are deep secrets in these woods. And triumphs and failures. Heart Spring Mountain is a microcosm of the larger world around us.
I had a bit of trouble at the beginning with the quick change in pov. But eventually I figured out who was who (sign of my age? suggest keeping a little list of characters), and slowly grew to love each one and to marvel at how the puzzle pieces gradually fit together. You don't unpeel this onion, its layers fold into itself to create a greater whole.
Finally, I'm not sure I've ever read a book that so brutally and exquisitely captures different forms of love in just a brief image or sketch or exchange. A few plot contrivances and repetitions I could overlook, being surrounded by the human beauty and frailty that MacArthur manages to capture. You feel like she is looking right into you, for better or worse.
I want to meet this author, sit down in a small cafe in a small town over a steaming cup of tea, and just talk...MacArthur poured her whole heart and soul into this debut novel, and you can feel it on every page. While I loved the setting (rural Vermont during different decades), what captured me most were the intimate exchanges she so deftly creates between her characters. Spoken and unspoken, physical, allegorical, mystical, sexual.
Underneath this is the violence of the earth breaking apart in floods and other natural disasters due to global warming. And the treatment and bias toward indigenous peoples. It's not an easy book to read, but an important one.
Vale, one of many female characters, but the main one, at one point calls out:
' "Find me!" Guttural. Loud. She has spent her entire adult life learning how to be alone." '
This is the undercurrent of the family saga. These hardy women are battered, broken, unique, but somehow rise above, each trying so hard to find any form of love, and to be found. "You get used to recognizing the impermanence of the ground, the trees, the walls, your own skin."
There are deep secrets in these woods. And triumphs and failures. Heart Spring Mountain is a microcosm of the larger world around us.
I had a bit of trouble at the beginning with the quick change in pov. But eventually I figured out who was who (sign of my age? suggest keeping a little list of characters), and slowly grew to love each one and to marvel at how the puzzle pieces gradually fit together. You don't unpeel this onion, its layers fold into itself to create a greater whole.
Finally, I'm not sure I've ever read a book that so brutally and exquisitely captures different forms of love in just a brief image or sketch or exchange. A few plot contrivances and repetitions I could overlook, being surrounded by the human beauty and frailty that MacArthur manages to capture. You feel like she is looking right into you, for better or worse.
January 20, 2018
I didn't forget about this book, finally I can share my review:
Via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
"She knows nothing of war. Her pain comes from different wounds, but isn’t all pain shaded the same color? Soft blue, plum. Running up and down our veins. Recognizable across the room."
I had the pleasure of reading an uncorrected proof of this novel months ago and it found me at just the right time. I was in the mood for nature, for disappearing and the writing hit me in all the right spots. I finished it late one night, sad that I’d have to wait months to write a review, because it’s a gorgeous debut novel. Vale has made a life for herself in New Orleans, away from her drug addicted mother, where she now tends the bar, immersing herself in the rhythm of her surrounding. In this life Vale is clean, sober, no longer influenced by her mother’s dysfunction, addiction. Watching tropical storm Irene on tv, she realizes that the river town being washed away by floods in Vermont is the one her mother lives on, and it isn’t immune to severe storms after all. A call from her aunt Deb, who feels more like a stranger than blood, stuns her with news that her mother walked off into the surging storm, seen by a neighbor walking towards the very bridge that has just collapsed. She grabs her cash and finds a bus back to the last place she ever wanted to return to. Why was her mother so restless, so desperate to escape a life of order?
Home again in Heart Spring (her family’s mountain) everything has changed, she sees the life her mother abandoned with different eyes. What Vale thinks she knows about her ancestors is poisoned by everything her mother has taught her. Her foolish, wild, free mother who believed they carried Indian blood. Was she just appropriating a culture, just how much history did her mother have right? Her aunt Hazel, unbeknownst to her, has a mind that is a ‘leaky ship full of holes.” She wonders, Is this Bonnie whom the storm has spit out… No. It is Bonnie’s girl, Vale, here to find her missing mother. How is Hazel ever going to communicate everything she knows, feels, remembers (all those things that are wrong and makes things right) when she herself is slowly disappearing? How can she let go of this life, when there is no one to care for the land, so deeply ingrained in her soul, that their ancestors settled? Vale has come to hate what the land represents, a cruel history stolen from the natives at hands of her family. But why do the remains of their past, family photos, tell a different story?
The addiction Bonnie has, the wreck she’s made of her life is evident, but there is still beauty in the memories Vale has. When you come to understand where the wildness in Bonnie springs from, there is a keener sense of understanding how the ruptures came about. Lena and Bonnie are both mysteries begging to be solved, both ghosts in their lifetimes. Vale is strong, but she is lost without a true history.
When Deb was young, she wanted to be free, to get back to the grass-roots of her grandmother’s people, the farming of crops, working the land, seduced by the writing of Thoreau and her grandmother’s memories, she makes her way to the mountain, to what she feels will be freedom! What she finds is a commune, but her youthful idealism will be shattered when the reality of hunger, poverty, betrayal, and the ever shifting direction of love occurs. When she finds Stephen, she clings, makes a home for herself beside him though he is unlike her fellow ‘hippie makeshift family’, the very ones she has walked away from. Over time, it becomes clear that a child isn’t enough to pull him out of his silences. Deb and Hazel (Stephen’s mother), are two lonely women who never wanted each other, blameless and yet pointing fingers at one another for the tragedy that takes place and here they are stuck together. Deb of the present is a mother longing for her grown son’s return, far more attuned to working with nature than she was in her wide-eyed youth, caring for her mother-in-law, as close to the version of the grandmother she once longed to be as she’ll ever get.
Past and present reveal secrets about three generation of women, hidden truths that change the structure of the family as they know it. We meet the family hermit Lena, a spirited woman who was as much a part of nature as any creature of the earth. Untamed, misunderstood and just as capable of passion as any ‘proper lady’. Hazel is the steady sister, the keeper of order, and the one whose heart breaks on the cruelty of years, losing everything she has come to love. Hazel, ‘a lifetime spent taking care of others.’ Why can’t she be selfish? Why, why does everyone prefer those who are free, abandon people like her who give so much, who make the right choice even when it robs her of all happiness? Why is nothing ever fully hers?
I know I am all over the place, much like the novel, because it is true that it jumps. It can be a problem for me sometimes with other novels, but I was so deeply engaged by all the characters that it flowed beautifully for me. I had my heart in my throat halfway through, thinking about the cruelties of life and the infections of love, because love isn’t always safe, romantic nor loyal. It’s not just a novel about an estranged mother and daughter, nor drug addiction, nor faults in family lines, it’s about all those things and nature is an ever-present character, sometimes a beast that reminds you it’s beyond your control. How wrong we are about each other, and even more about ourselves. How much does our anger towards others matter at the end? What do we keep with our pain? What do we gain when we let it go?
Available Now
HarperCollins
Via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
"She knows nothing of war. Her pain comes from different wounds, but isn’t all pain shaded the same color? Soft blue, plum. Running up and down our veins. Recognizable across the room."
I had the pleasure of reading an uncorrected proof of this novel months ago and it found me at just the right time. I was in the mood for nature, for disappearing and the writing hit me in all the right spots. I finished it late one night, sad that I’d have to wait months to write a review, because it’s a gorgeous debut novel. Vale has made a life for herself in New Orleans, away from her drug addicted mother, where she now tends the bar, immersing herself in the rhythm of her surrounding. In this life Vale is clean, sober, no longer influenced by her mother’s dysfunction, addiction. Watching tropical storm Irene on tv, she realizes that the river town being washed away by floods in Vermont is the one her mother lives on, and it isn’t immune to severe storms after all. A call from her aunt Deb, who feels more like a stranger than blood, stuns her with news that her mother walked off into the surging storm, seen by a neighbor walking towards the very bridge that has just collapsed. She grabs her cash and finds a bus back to the last place she ever wanted to return to. Why was her mother so restless, so desperate to escape a life of order?
Home again in Heart Spring (her family’s mountain) everything has changed, she sees the life her mother abandoned with different eyes. What Vale thinks she knows about her ancestors is poisoned by everything her mother has taught her. Her foolish, wild, free mother who believed they carried Indian blood. Was she just appropriating a culture, just how much history did her mother have right? Her aunt Hazel, unbeknownst to her, has a mind that is a ‘leaky ship full of holes.” She wonders, Is this Bonnie whom the storm has spit out… No. It is Bonnie’s girl, Vale, here to find her missing mother. How is Hazel ever going to communicate everything she knows, feels, remembers (all those things that are wrong and makes things right) when she herself is slowly disappearing? How can she let go of this life, when there is no one to care for the land, so deeply ingrained in her soul, that their ancestors settled? Vale has come to hate what the land represents, a cruel history stolen from the natives at hands of her family. But why do the remains of their past, family photos, tell a different story?
The addiction Bonnie has, the wreck she’s made of her life is evident, but there is still beauty in the memories Vale has. When you come to understand where the wildness in Bonnie springs from, there is a keener sense of understanding how the ruptures came about. Lena and Bonnie are both mysteries begging to be solved, both ghosts in their lifetimes. Vale is strong, but she is lost without a true history.
When Deb was young, she wanted to be free, to get back to the grass-roots of her grandmother’s people, the farming of crops, working the land, seduced by the writing of Thoreau and her grandmother’s memories, she makes her way to the mountain, to what she feels will be freedom! What she finds is a commune, but her youthful idealism will be shattered when the reality of hunger, poverty, betrayal, and the ever shifting direction of love occurs. When she finds Stephen, she clings, makes a home for herself beside him though he is unlike her fellow ‘hippie makeshift family’, the very ones she has walked away from. Over time, it becomes clear that a child isn’t enough to pull him out of his silences. Deb and Hazel (Stephen’s mother), are two lonely women who never wanted each other, blameless and yet pointing fingers at one another for the tragedy that takes place and here they are stuck together. Deb of the present is a mother longing for her grown son’s return, far more attuned to working with nature than she was in her wide-eyed youth, caring for her mother-in-law, as close to the version of the grandmother she once longed to be as she’ll ever get.
Past and present reveal secrets about three generation of women, hidden truths that change the structure of the family as they know it. We meet the family hermit Lena, a spirited woman who was as much a part of nature as any creature of the earth. Untamed, misunderstood and just as capable of passion as any ‘proper lady’. Hazel is the steady sister, the keeper of order, and the one whose heart breaks on the cruelty of years, losing everything she has come to love. Hazel, ‘a lifetime spent taking care of others.’ Why can’t she be selfish? Why, why does everyone prefer those who are free, abandon people like her who give so much, who make the right choice even when it robs her of all happiness? Why is nothing ever fully hers?
I know I am all over the place, much like the novel, because it is true that it jumps. It can be a problem for me sometimes with other novels, but I was so deeply engaged by all the characters that it flowed beautifully for me. I had my heart in my throat halfway through, thinking about the cruelties of life and the infections of love, because love isn’t always safe, romantic nor loyal. It’s not just a novel about an estranged mother and daughter, nor drug addiction, nor faults in family lines, it’s about all those things and nature is an ever-present character, sometimes a beast that reminds you it’s beyond your control. How wrong we are about each other, and even more about ourselves. How much does our anger towards others matter at the end? What do we keep with our pain? What do we gain when we let it go?
Available Now
HarperCollins
January 28, 2018
Admittedly, this was a DNF for me -- nice writing, unique settings, but too many fragmentary narrative threads + not my brand of bleak.
August 14, 2017
I found this story very difficult to follow. It was narrated by several women and the story line bounced over several time periods. Bonnie disappears during a hurricane and her estranged daughter Vale returns home to look for her. Lena the grandmother is still around and Vale works on developing a relationship with her. The story line was a good one, mirroring recent events but I just couldn't stay interested in the characters.
December 25, 2017
A lot of potential, but a little hard to follow. Full review to come.
October 4, 2020
A young woman returns to her rural New England home when her drug addicted mother goes missing. In the weeks she lingers there, she finds family secrets and new love. These family secrets are revealed to the reader in short chapters that shift between time frames and characters. I do not enjoy the technique of shifting time and perspective, especially when the alterations come rapidly. This novel is clearly atmospheric and tender, but I was unable to tap into either of those qualities. 2.5 stars
February 23, 2018
If you like druggies and poor trashy folks then this is for you. If you like drunks and displaced people then this is for you. I never liked any character nor felt any emotion about the storyline. A waste of time....
March 8, 2018
This was a moving multi-generational story set on family land in Vermont. Although the initial chapters require a bit more attention to get acquainted with the individual characters and time periods, it is worth the effort. MacArthur's writing is deft and beautiful, making the story flow through the various narrators. I loved reading about the innately human women; flawed, searching, and each finding their own connection to the world and earth around them.
April 12, 2021
This story had the makings of what I love best- multiple generations of women, multiple timelines, nature, struggle, survival. But all of the shifting back and forth was a bit muddled and hard to follow. The writing was mostly beautiful-especially the descriptions of the land and the solitude. The problem was that I didn’t really like any of the characters except for Lena. It was also heavily layered with climate change themes in a way that was annoying rather than effective. Even more heavy on the mention of wine and stew—I mean, they were constantly drinking wine and yet none of them had any real jobs! I love the idea of living off the land but it was glorified in a very unrealistic way here. It did pull me into the woods of New England though, so that made it worth it in the end.
June 16, 2024
Heart Spring Mountain takes place mostly in Vermont and follows women from three generations. I nearly chucked this into the DNF pile several times, but after I was in for a while, I decided to keep reading. Robin MacArthur has written a bleak novel with most of the women struggling mightily to make it through. The men have a hard time, too, but the focus of the book is the women. I wondered as I was reading what the purpose of this book is....I think it's so I can be grateful that I don't live like these characters do. Lena lives with an owl named Otie; she catches mice in live traps, holds them by the tail, and feeds them live to Otie. Disturbing. There were many disturbing issues for me. Towards the end of the book, the shifting of viewpoints was only a couple of pages long. The narrative became fragmented. On a side note, this book had more typos than anything I've read in ages. If it hadn't been a library book, I would've marked and counted them.
February 21, 2018
4.5 stars
Thought provoking, heartfelt read. I may have struggled with the flashbacks, the generations of women and the secrets hidden in the cabins on Heart Spring Mountain but the intertwined lives of these flawed yet powerful women drew me in. What moved me the most was the history of the area and the impact on its descendants. The intentional obliteration of the Abenaki tribe, a New England ethnic cleansing will be what I take away from this read. I love when pieces of history invade the narrative. The concept of "No Word for Time" in the Algonquin tradition made me want to hunt down Evan Pritchard's book on the tribe.
My kind of read.
Thought provoking, heartfelt read. I may have struggled with the flashbacks, the generations of women and the secrets hidden in the cabins on Heart Spring Mountain but the intertwined lives of these flawed yet powerful women drew me in. What moved me the most was the history of the area and the impact on its descendants. The intentional obliteration of the Abenaki tribe, a New England ethnic cleansing will be what I take away from this read. I love when pieces of history invade the narrative. The concept of "No Word for Time" in the Algonquin tradition made me want to hunt down Evan Pritchard's book on the tribe.
My kind of read.
December 26, 2019
I really love quiet novels that focus on characters and land with a strong sense of place. I also like novels with multiple POVs/timelines so I should have really loved this but unfortunately I found it a bit muddled. The chapters (which rotate among a cast of mostly related female characters in multiple timelines) are so short that it is hard to make the character connections that I need in this type of novel. I enjoyed the first half much more than the second.
January 20, 2018
A highly absorbing story of three generations of women each coping with their own lives, loves, losses and pain. They are deeply connected to their rural home land of Vermont and are tied to each other but not in a normal, open way. There are hidden inter generational family secrets and inner struggles.
So there is a quest by the youngest woman, Vale, to find her missing mother, Bonnie, (presumably drowned) during a tropical storm. It’s been a year since they last saw each other and it was under very bad circumstances.
It is Vale who basically sets her formerly useless, stagnant life in motion by actively searching for her mother back home. The entire process allows her to find her true inner self as well as make peace and to have hope for the future and repair/reinvent family relationships.
The author wrote parts of this story in a different style of some short staccato like sentences intermingled with normal length sentences. This was different yet had an impact on me. I found myself really connecting with those feelings/descriptions on those short worded “sentences/phrases.” There was no need to add any other filler words to gain the impact desired. It was written to be bold and blunt and true. I liked it; it was rather refreshing. However, other readers may find it hard to follow, or just dislike it altogether.
Examples:
“Ever restless.”
“Feel minuscule, evaporated.”
“Flicker of bus lights. Pounding wheels.” “Feathered, pink-eared, blue-veined. Easter egg bird.”
“Naked. Rolling. A dog in its arms. No. Something smaller. Pink. The child is laughing. It’s a pig.”
So there is a quest by the youngest woman, Vale, to find her missing mother, Bonnie, (presumably drowned) during a tropical storm. It’s been a year since they last saw each other and it was under very bad circumstances.
It is Vale who basically sets her formerly useless, stagnant life in motion by actively searching for her mother back home. The entire process allows her to find her true inner self as well as make peace and to have hope for the future and repair/reinvent family relationships.
The author wrote parts of this story in a different style of some short staccato like sentences intermingled with normal length sentences. This was different yet had an impact on me. I found myself really connecting with those feelings/descriptions on those short worded “sentences/phrases.” There was no need to add any other filler words to gain the impact desired. It was written to be bold and blunt and true. I liked it; it was rather refreshing. However, other readers may find it hard to follow, or just dislike it altogether.
Examples:
“Ever restless.”
“Feel minuscule, evaporated.”
“Flicker of bus lights. Pounding wheels.” “Feathered, pink-eared, blue-veined. Easter egg bird.”
“Naked. Rolling. A dog in its arms. No. Something smaller. Pink. The child is laughing. It’s a pig.”
November 5, 2019
I bought MacArthur's short story anthology Half Wild a few years ago and fell head over heels for her writing, devouring the book in three hours on the train. With such high expectations, I was regretfully disappointed in Heart Spring Mountain.
MacArthur's prose is beautiful. She is a true poet. The story itself, however, is confusing and several characters are underdeveloped and done away with too quickly. The novel shifts between varying perspectives of women within a family, creating a multi-generational epic. I'm a sucker for these stories, so it's doubly disappointing this one fell flat.
The story reminded me almost immediately of Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff. Both novels attempt to convey a young woman's search for identity from her past while wrestling with ugly truths of events current and longsince passed. I'm not one to pit women writers against one another, but Groff does it better. The lack of social awareness in this novel was simply too much for me.
MacArthur clearly has a deep connection to the Vermont wilderness. It shines through in all of her writings. This particular story, for me, just missed the mark.
MacArthur's prose is beautiful. She is a true poet. The story itself, however, is confusing and several characters are underdeveloped and done away with too quickly. The novel shifts between varying perspectives of women within a family, creating a multi-generational epic. I'm a sucker for these stories, so it's doubly disappointing this one fell flat.
The story reminded me almost immediately of Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff. Both novels attempt to convey a young woman's search for identity from her past while wrestling with ugly truths of events current and longsince passed. I'm not one to pit women writers against one another, but Groff does it better. The lack of social awareness in this novel was simply too much for me.
MacArthur clearly has a deep connection to the Vermont wilderness. It shines through in all of her writings. This particular story, for me, just missed the mark.
March 3, 2018
(1.5)
I'm going to chalk this one up to a poor choice on my part. While I wish I had a secret formula for picking the right book at the right time, I don't. If you do, then please tell me how you do it. Why did I choose this novel? Simple—location: Vermont, where my family is from; theme: frayed mother-daughter relationship/redemption/family secrets, and premise: mother disappears in a storm, daughter returns to try and find her. On the surface it ticked a lot of boxes for me, but once I started reading it was too fractured and I didn’t love the writing enough to stick with it.
I'm going to chalk this one up to a poor choice on my part. While I wish I had a secret formula for picking the right book at the right time, I don't. If you do, then please tell me how you do it. Why did I choose this novel? Simple—location: Vermont, where my family is from; theme: frayed mother-daughter relationship/redemption/family secrets, and premise: mother disappears in a storm, daughter returns to try and find her. On the surface it ticked a lot of boxes for me, but once I started reading it was too fractured and I didn’t love the writing enough to stick with it.
October 24, 2018
I loved this book; beautifully written story of three generations of women and the place they love. It made me miss Vermont (I lived there for eight years). I wasn't sure at the beginning if I liked it, but the deeper I got into the story, the more I identified with the characters. If you have ever lived in Vermont, this book will speak to you. I found it tremendously moving. Also, I recommend the author's short story collection, Half-Wild: Stories.
June 6, 2018
This was my idea of perfection. Setting is quiet, isolated and at times lonely. The characters: 5 strong, very different women with a commonality that tugged at my heart. The storyline captured me from the beginning and still won’t let loose. The narrative is pure magic and left me wanting for more.
August 3, 2017
Thank you for making this title available. Unfortunately, the further I read, the more I was convinced that this was not the kind of book that I would enjoy. This is no criticism whatsoever of the plot, characters, writing style, setting, or the author. Merely a statement of my own preferences.
February 16, 2018
A bittersweet and harrowing tale about returning home, returning to your roots. Interestingly written, the stories of Vale, Deb, Hazel, Lena, Marie, Stephen, Danny and Bonnie are raw and real. An emotional read nonetheless.
February 24, 2018
Gorgeous, spirited, free. Captures the soul of Vermont. Could not love it more.
February 28, 2018
A book filled with strong women living in rural New England. Ya got me there. I had a predisposition to like it, and I did.
April 18, 2018
3.5 stars, started out good, ending was kind of lame
May 27, 2018
Juggling multiple narratives across different time periods is no easy task even for an experienced novelist. I agree with other reviewers that it was challenging, if not difficult, to keep track of these characters. Until I was about half way through the book I was still wondering who was who and what were their relationships to each other. And that was despite the fact that I was able to spend large chunks of time reading in one sitting. If I had tried to read this book as I normally read most books in shorter time periods over a number of days, I might have given up because of the frustration over trying to keep all the characters straight in my mind.
When she was asked about this in a radio interview she did, MacArthur noted it was because she had all these characters in mind. And she added that she wanted her readers to be able ‘to empathize’ with different points of view about things because she believes this is sorely lacking in today's world.
Despite, or maybe because of, this complexity this is a rich and rewarding read. The characters seem to become very real people struggling with profound challenges in their lives. I was greatly moved by their valiant, and sometimes problematic, efforts to cope with their isolation and their search for meaning in the context of family history they only vaguely know about, if at all. Towards the end of the book the younger woman who is the main protagonist realizes just how important it is for people to 'resurrect' themselves after having been dealt with the blows of life. Determined and resilient these women, and the fewer men, in the story try to find their way in the midst of much turmoil and deeply painful losses.
Perhaps it is my own stereotypical thinking but I am not sure how realistic it is for people living in rural Vermont to have as much knowledge of the fine arts as many of these characters do. For example, the book is filled with references to such literary giants as Faulkner, Thoreau, Grace Paley, and Keats. And to music by Neil Young, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, Leonard Cohen, Ruth Brown, Missy Elliott, and Nina Simone. Mac Arthur noted in that interview that she grew up with music being listened to by her parents, that she played in a band for 10 years with her husband, and that she is always thinking of music. There are also references to film which one of the characters turned to as a way to cope with the sudden death of her partner. One of the characters in the book noted, "Where would we be without art?" It shows in this book!
So do MacArthur's observations about life, love, and the world we live in nowadays. Here is a short list of some of the things these characters say at various points in the story:
"the past is part of the present and the future"
"we are the sum total of our relationships"
"near the sickness also lies the cure"
(we live in) "a culture based on division rather than interconnection. Isolation rather than belonging."
"the curse of motherhood. They make us happy and yet we cannot make them happy."
These may sound a bit too formulaic when seen this way. But I found them to be profoundly poignant in the context of the book's unfolding plot and character development.
Likewise was MacArthur's timely inclusion of information about Native Americans living in Vermont. In referring to a book on Algonquin culture called No Word for Time she shared some fascinating ideas about time and society. She managed to allude to some relevant NA history in that region: the genocide of the colonial and post Revolutionary War days and a eugenics program in the 1920's in which many NA women were sterilized without their knowledge.
In addition to the themes of the importance of resilience and art in people’s lives the book highlights the author’s concerns about the opioid epidemic in rural America, climate change, and corporatism with its resulting income inequality. While I largely concur with these concerns, I also agree with some reviewers who opined that she makes too many references to climate related catastrophes around the world. By the end of the book I began to feel a bit bludgeoned by all of this.
However, all of these are relatively modest flaws in an otherwise outstanding book. For me a good piece of fiction leaves me wishing that the story did not end. I found myself wondering what would happen to some of these wonderfully resilient and creative women and men. Maybe (hope, hope) MacArthur will write a sequel? What a marvelous film this could be. Or a series on HBO or Netflix.
I am not generally a fan of short stories. But I will certainly read MacArthur's collection which predates this novel, looking for the nuggets which were the start of these characters and the issues which she portrays in this book. Given my growing interest in things having to do with the history and cultures of our NA peoples in the USA I will also read No Word for Time.
For those who are interested, her interview can be heard at https://www.bookish.com/articles/robi...
When she was asked about this in a radio interview she did, MacArthur noted it was because she had all these characters in mind. And she added that she wanted her readers to be able ‘to empathize’ with different points of view about things because she believes this is sorely lacking in today's world.
Despite, or maybe because of, this complexity this is a rich and rewarding read. The characters seem to become very real people struggling with profound challenges in their lives. I was greatly moved by their valiant, and sometimes problematic, efforts to cope with their isolation and their search for meaning in the context of family history they only vaguely know about, if at all. Towards the end of the book the younger woman who is the main protagonist realizes just how important it is for people to 'resurrect' themselves after having been dealt with the blows of life. Determined and resilient these women, and the fewer men, in the story try to find their way in the midst of much turmoil and deeply painful losses.
Perhaps it is my own stereotypical thinking but I am not sure how realistic it is for people living in rural Vermont to have as much knowledge of the fine arts as many of these characters do. For example, the book is filled with references to such literary giants as Faulkner, Thoreau, Grace Paley, and Keats. And to music by Neil Young, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, Leonard Cohen, Ruth Brown, Missy Elliott, and Nina Simone. Mac Arthur noted in that interview that she grew up with music being listened to by her parents, that she played in a band for 10 years with her husband, and that she is always thinking of music. There are also references to film which one of the characters turned to as a way to cope with the sudden death of her partner. One of the characters in the book noted, "Where would we be without art?" It shows in this book!
So do MacArthur's observations about life, love, and the world we live in nowadays. Here is a short list of some of the things these characters say at various points in the story:
"the past is part of the present and the future"
"we are the sum total of our relationships"
"near the sickness also lies the cure"
(we live in) "a culture based on division rather than interconnection. Isolation rather than belonging."
"the curse of motherhood. They make us happy and yet we cannot make them happy."
These may sound a bit too formulaic when seen this way. But I found them to be profoundly poignant in the context of the book's unfolding plot and character development.
Likewise was MacArthur's timely inclusion of information about Native Americans living in Vermont. In referring to a book on Algonquin culture called No Word for Time she shared some fascinating ideas about time and society. She managed to allude to some relevant NA history in that region: the genocide of the colonial and post Revolutionary War days and a eugenics program in the 1920's in which many NA women were sterilized without their knowledge.
In addition to the themes of the importance of resilience and art in people’s lives the book highlights the author’s concerns about the opioid epidemic in rural America, climate change, and corporatism with its resulting income inequality. While I largely concur with these concerns, I also agree with some reviewers who opined that she makes too many references to climate related catastrophes around the world. By the end of the book I began to feel a bit bludgeoned by all of this.
However, all of these are relatively modest flaws in an otherwise outstanding book. For me a good piece of fiction leaves me wishing that the story did not end. I found myself wondering what would happen to some of these wonderfully resilient and creative women and men. Maybe (hope, hope) MacArthur will write a sequel? What a marvelous film this could be. Or a series on HBO or Netflix.
I am not generally a fan of short stories. But I will certainly read MacArthur's collection which predates this novel, looking for the nuggets which were the start of these characters and the issues which she portrays in this book. Given my growing interest in things having to do with the history and cultures of our NA peoples in the USA I will also read No Word for Time.
For those who are interested, her interview can be heard at https://www.bookish.com/articles/robi...
February 17, 2018
i really liked this book - the way the complex’s matriarchal characters are woven together was subtle and well done. it’s a slow simmer of a book revealing family secrets and a connection to land that was nicely depicted.
my only one small criticism was that the political references to occupy, etc. made the story feel more dated than it needed to be. i think those notes were hit without the naming....
my only one small criticism was that the political references to occupy, etc. made the story feel more dated than it needed to be. i think those notes were hit without the naming....
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