The Simple Life

by Ruth King Porter

What is happening in Vermont now that new people are moving in and the old agrarian ways are dying THE SIMPLE LIFE is a deeply engaging rural trag edy about well-meaning ordinary people whose lives tangle with each other in a destructive way. The only true innocents are the team of oxen whose own story is one of the central threads. In 1991, Isabel Rawlings, a middle-aged suburbanite, recently divorced, moves to Severance, Vermont, to try to live a simple, rural life. She gets romantically involved with Leroy LaFourniere, a real estate developer and small-town hustler, and she makes friends with an old ox teamster, Sonny Trumbley, and his great granddaughter, Alison LePage. After a tragic farm accident, everything unravels, and Isabel realizes that the simple life isn't as simple as she had fantasized. The book has 427 pages and 36 black and white photographs of Vermont scenes taken by the author.

Genres: Fiction

427 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

I was born in New York City in 1940, and I grew up in Alliance, Ohio, but it wasn’t until I had graduated from St. John’s College and married Bill Porter that I moved to Vermont. That was when I felt as though I had really come home. Books were important in my family. My mother was one of the daughters of Max Perkins, the editor of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. I always read a lot, but I never thought I wanted to write until I had lived in Vermont for a few years. I loved the land and the weather and the people, and I wanted to tell about all of it. If my novels make you feel as though you have spent some time in Vermont, then I have succeeded. There is more about me and about my books on my website, www.ruthkingporter.com

Reviews

[Jay Ginsburg · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Simple Life seems to leave us thinking that 'simple' is a goal that is very complicated to reach. At least for the main character, who follows her fantasy when her marriage breaks up, hard truths get in the way. If it is easy for anyone, it's the reader, who can follow along, appreciate the complexities her search brings, and reflect on the life we have (we hope) a little more clearly.
Both place and time are familiar to me, and Ruth Porter shows a good understanding of how both work to form and inform what happens.
Yes, one of those books that kept me up late!

[Elena Vaughn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m surprised this book doesn’t have more reviews. It did take me quite a bit longer to finish than many others. The author takes time and care to describe every situation in great detail. I wish the tragedy wasn’t mentioned in the blurb, because about half way through I knew exactly what it’ll be by the way the author put an emphasis on some of the activities of certain characters. It was a big spoiler for me. I’m still thinking about the events that took place and trying to make out what it meant to me. I have a love/hate relationship with Isabel. I felt for her during her entire struggle to find herself again after her marriage fell apart, and at the same time she really just came across as an ignorant and selfish person. But maybe that was the whole point.

[Lydia Gates · Rating 3 out of 5]

A naive girl learns a hard lesson.

[Linda Hawk · Rating 4 out of 5]

After winning a copy of "Ordinary Magic" through Goodreads, I had the opportunity to correspond with Ms. Porter regarding how much I enjoyed her book. She kindly sent me a copy of "The Simple Life" to read as well.

Ms. Porter did an excellent job of showing how hard it is for people who don't know the farm lifestyle to understand what it really is. It may look like the "Simple" life, but there are so many hard edges to deal with on a daily basis.

Porter's Isabel is such a likable, yet naive character and is like so many other disenchanted souls who see, wish, want and honestly believe they can live their dream life without ever understanding the reality of the world they see their dream in. Then, when that reality slaps them in the face, feel they have been wronged by life.

Porter does a magnificent job of giving us characters we can not only see, but feel their every emotion. And even a couple characters we could easily learn to hate. With every page turned, I found memories of my childhood on our small farm, the people I grew up around, and the animals we worked with every day.

This isn't a feel good story, it's a reality of life story. I cried through most of the last few pages and had to stop more than once as memories of my grandfather, uncles and father, both happy and sad, flooded back to me.

Well done, Ms. Porter. And thanks for the trip down memory lane.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A middle-aged woman, newly divorced and having severed all connections to her past life, moves to a rural town in Vermont in order to live "the simple life," based on her naive and romanticized perceptions of such an existence. She quickly finds that while some aspects are as wholesome as she had guessed, life in Severance is nothing like simple, and her naiveté eventually leads to personal tragedy that changes not only the lives of several characters, but also the very face of the land that she has come to love. A novel not so much about characters coming to deep realizations as it is about the deep costs at which such realizations are bought.