Black angus

by Newton Thornburg

Dust jacket design by Char Lappan. His fifth book. The story of a man who leaves his cushy job in the city and moves his family to the Ozarks to raise cattle.

Genres: Thriller, Crime, Fiction

243 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Born in Harvey, Illinois, Thornburg graduated from the University of Iowa with a Fine Arts degree. He worked in a variety of jobs before devoting himself to writing full-time (or at least in tandem with his cattle farm in the Ozarks) in 1973.
His 1976 novel Cutter and Bone was filmed in 1981 as Cutter's Way. The New York Times called Cutter and Bone "the best novel of its kind for ten years." Another novel-to film Beautiful Kate was filmed in Australia in 2009 and starred Bryan Brown and Ben Mendelsohn. It was directed by Rachel Ward, who is Bryan Brown's real-life wife.
Thornburg died on May 9, 2011, a few days shy of his 82nd birthday.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

In short, this is yet another masterpiece by Thornburgh. As with many other Thornburgh novels, it's a story of rootlessness, disconnectness, loneliness, and pain. It paints a picture of cloudy skies and sad defeats.

Blanchard is a rootless man, who left his well-paid job in advertising and plunked down his small inheritance on a ranch in the Ozarks. He sees it as a taste of freedom from traffic jams and endless urban frustrations and takes his wife his son and his mentally disabled brother there.

But they are like fish out of water. The locals don't want them there. Ranching doesn't come naturally to Blanchard. The farm is mortgaged to the hilt and the money is all gone. A big drunk troublemaking houseguest joins them. And the slow sordid collapse continues. And everything is a metaphor for ruin from the failed empty marriage to cattle disease to the bank threatening to foreclose.

You know without being told the cattle rustling scheme with an ex convict making the arrangements is doomed to failure but it's like watching a car wreck about to happen. You can't look away.

This is wonderful writing that just captures the dry dusty sadness of the story and the characters all determined to do what they have to even if they don't really want to.

Thornburgh is one of those great writers few have heard of, but you always finish his books feeling lucky to have found them. They are that good. They are that powerful.

[Tara Rock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just started reading my fourth book by author Thornburg and have to find more. He is that good. In "Black Angus" I don't know what appealed to me more: the Ozarks, the ranch/cattle, the autistic brother, the ex-con, or our protagonist, Bob. There wasn't much good in this story, just bad and ugly; Life.

[WJEP · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blanchard is an ad exec turned shitkicker and dung shoveler. All he has are liabilities: diseased cattle, piggish best buddy, retarded brother, sissified son, scornful wife, trailer-trash side-bimbo, mounds of debt, and a leery creditor.

Blanchard's plight makes him turn to crime, but you know this dumb cluck can't pull it off. Thornburg puts you in this loser's boots and makes you suffer. Most of the book is ranching and worrying -- two of my favorite topics.

[Robert Intriago · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5. An imaginative southern noir written a few years back. I was reading an article on the subject and the author of this book was mentioned as an undiscovered practitioner of the genre. The plot takes place in the Ozark's near Arkansas. A former city dweller buys a cattle ranch because he is tired of city life and has received an inheritance from his mother. Things do not turn out the way he planned and now he has to resort to illegal methods to recover his money. Let me start by saying that the narrative is not as dark as a Larry Brown or a Ray Pollock novel, but it somewhat approaches it. Not badly written with some good characters and a so-so dialogue.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bleak modern western

The earliest Thornburg books are his best, and while BLACK ANGUS isn't quite at the heights of CUTTER AND BONE or his masterpiece TO DIE IN CALIFORNIA, it bears the same brutal honesty in its assault on the price of toxic masculinity in the depressed 70s Ozarks. Thornburg was himself a cattle farmer for a while so the dollops of factual information on herding and such can be a bit jargony for the uninitiated, but there's no other fat on this lean, painful story of a farmer pushed to desperate measures.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

40ish Bob Blanchard grew tired of his city life and imagined that he would be happier doing the honest work of a cattle rancher, “it was almost a paradigm of that dream which had nurtured him through his desk bound days, all the monkeyhouse meetings when he had chattered away as mindlessly as everyone else”. In this 1978 book Blanchard has gambled everything on the ranch but finds it increasingly difficult to hold onto his new life. Maybe it’s not an original idea for a plot, but I don’t think the tale has been told better than this.

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strangely, the last two books I have read have both been about the same thing, farmers at the end of their tether.. though in other ways, they couldn’t be more different. The last was about a rural farm in North Wales, Cynan Jones’s The Long Dry, this is the Missouri Ozarks.

Here, an ex-(M)Ad Man, Bob Blanchard, (it’s set in the 1970s) turned cattle rancher has problems making his bank loans to the extent that they threaten to repossess, his wife and young son have left him, and his herd have brucellosis and may need to be culled. His only respite comes from his younger adult brother who is severely autistic, a bar-maid stroke girlfriend, and a nasty freeloading friend who convinces Bob that the only way out of his situation is a nefarious scheme he comes up with.

It’s entertaining, part noir part southern gothic, but I get the feeling that Thornburg is a better writer than this which doesn’t ultimately convince, though new to his writing.. and looking at a few other reviews, that seems to be the case.

If I had to recommend a sad book about the struggles of farming it would be, no surprise, the former, Cynan Jones.

[Eric_W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feeling good today? Everything going along nicely? This book will knock out the underpinnings of that positivity. It’s depressing.

I really felt for this guy. Tired of city life, Blanchard and his wife use his inheritance to purchase a farm in the Missouri Ozarks (Thornburgh apparently had a farm there also — I truly hop this is not autobiographical.) , hoping to raise cattle. Beset by weather problems and low cattle prices, he's unable to get an extension on his bank loan, and soon his wife has had enough. To make things more difficult his wife, decides to return to St. Louis with their son leaving him with his brain-injured brother and ner do well farm hand. Bang's Disease is a constant worry, for if any in the herd test positive, they will all have to be destroyed. In his case, that could be a negative or perhaps a positive. Or perhaps there is another way out....

In the end he’s betrayed by everyone, his wife, his girlfriend, his best friend, the government, the cattle, the weather, God, as it all collapses. Thornburg is a good writer, though, so I’ll read more of his books.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can grow accustomed to Thornburg's despair-drenched content, but here the protagonist, a fish-out-of-water cattle rancher with solid work ethic yet zero instincts, is a failure without charisma. Unlike the cast of "Cutter and Bone", you don't enjoy getting drunk with him or his lousy friends. Nor the trampy noir-esque female, who enters the messy circle of activity. The criminal enterprise to profit from the doomed ranch is interesting, but it's no surprise that most of the characters' misbehavior will spell disaster. Most disappointing is the amount of time spent with the rancher and his teardrops, lamenting his infidelity and bad choices.

[Paul McDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story about loss, isolation and the steady grind of existence. If you’re looking for a cheery, feel-good novel with a happy ending then this ain’t it. I had never heard of Newton Thornburg’s work until last Saturday when I stumbled upon ‘Black Angus’ by accident, but I was grabbed by his prose and invested until the end.
If you like neo-noir crime novels then ‘Black Angus’ is the one.

[Freddie the Know-it-all · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another ...

... one I didn't see coming.

This Thornburg guy is really good. My current favorite.