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Strange as This Weather Has Been
Set in present day West Virginia, Ann Pancake’s debut novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been, tells the story of a coal mining family— a couple and their four children— living through the latest mining boom and dealing with the mountaintop removal and strip mining that is ruining what is left of their mountain life. As the mine turns the mountains to slag and wastewater, workers struggle with layoffs and children find adventure in the blasted moonscape craters.
Strange As This Weather Has Been follows several members of the family, with a particular focus on fifteen-year-old Bant and her mother, Lace. Working at a “scab” motel, Bant becomes involved with a young miner while her mother contemplates joining the fight against the mining companies. As domestic conflicts escalate at home, the children are pushed more and more outside among junk from the floods and felled trees in the hollows— the only nature they have ever known. But Bant has other memories and is as curious and strong-willed as her mother, and ultimately comes to discover the very real threat of destruction that looms as much in the landscape as it does at home.
Strange As This Weather Has Been follows several members of the family, with a particular focus on fifteen-year-old Bant and her mother, Lace. Working at a “scab” motel, Bant becomes involved with a young miner while her mother contemplates joining the fight against the mining companies. As domestic conflicts escalate at home, the children are pushed more and more outside among junk from the floods and felled trees in the hollows— the only nature they have ever known. But Bant has other memories and is as curious and strong-willed as her mother, and ultimately comes to discover the very real threat of destruction that looms as much in the landscape as it does at home.
357 pages, Paperback
First published September 10, 2007
215 people are currently reading
2537 people want to read
About the author
Ann Pancake
13 books56 followersAnn Pancake is an American fiction writer and essayist. She has published short stories and essays describing the people and atmosphere of Appalachia, often from the first-person perspective of those living there. While fictional, her short stories contribute to an understanding of poverty in the 20th century, as well as the historical roots of American and rural poverty. She graduated summa cum laude from West Virginia University with a degree in English. She earned her M.A. in English from the University of North Carolina, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington.
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March 24, 2008
Ann Pancake's first novel is one that is equally rich in the tactile detail of West Virginia's hollows as it is in its language. Pancake's style is dense, wet, and earthy, somehow evoking a sense of place and landscape through word choice, rhythm, and diction as well as classical imagery. The novel, teetering on a knife-edge between political activism and literary fiction does an excellent job of conveying its message against mountain top removal without dragging the reader into a pit of blind advocacy. I think it succeeds in this because this is a novel of survival, place, and freedom (as in the ability to claim and protect your home) before it is a novel of political activism. The characters are rich, gritty, and affected by their situation differently. The issue of for/against mountaintop removal isn't so clear as the issue of survival, and the need to provide for family and future families.
Aside from that, when I read Pancake's fiction, I can taste earth, smell the wet twinge of fallen leaves. She's a master wordsmith.
Aside from that, when I read Pancake's fiction, I can taste earth, smell the wet twinge of fallen leaves. She's a master wordsmith.
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June 28, 2016I'm not sure I can give this book a star rating.
See, I grew up with people like Bant, and Lace, and Jimmy Make. And this book is about every reason they are what they are and will never change, and it drives me around the flipping bend. We get the schools suck and the companies are horrible and no one gives a crap about West Virginia. We get it.
Except, people don't.
They see the place and the people as dumb hickdom. They don't understand how generational poverty works, or how it feels for a single entity to own your entire life. They have not been raised to think of home as the landscape they live in, rather than "the heart" or whatever most of America thinks. Most of America, of the world, sees West Virginia and laughs at it.
I don't doubt that the mining issues this book explores are exactly what the companies are doing. I've seen it enough to know they have as little respect for the land and the people as rest of middle-class America. This book brings up the fascinating paradox of if you are against nuclear energy because it kills, then why the eff are you not screaming your lungs out about coal, because it's every bit as horrible for the people and environment as nuclear. Why the eff? Go scream, go do something!
At the same time, I was not in love with the writing of this book. I was never going to love the characters--they aren't loveable characters, and they aren't supposed to be. The people they represent in real life are just as hard and unloveable--god but there's a reason no one cares about middle Appalachia. (WV is not southern Appalachia, FYI.)
But laying that aside, I found the plot to be wandery, and I disliked that there was almost no dialogue. Just paragraphs and paragraphs of telling. If ever a book needed a dose of show, it's this one. I skipped the first fifty pages and most chapters that weren't Bant speaking, going back and reading passages if I got confused. So there you have it, I didn't even read this the way the author intended, another reason I can't seem to figure out a rating.
I liked the dialect portrayal for the most part, though I think a couple characters had slightly broader vocabularies than seemed actually in character for them. Still, it helped shape the tone of the book and gave us the feel of it.
But what about the star rating?
I want to say: read this book, it says some really important things about why people stay in bad situations, and why WV matters, and why it's not a joke--the joke is on you for laughing at tragedy. At the same time, I did not particularly enjoy reading this book. So. There you have it. Was it good? I don't know.
See, I grew up with people like Bant, and Lace, and Jimmy Make. And this book is about every reason they are what they are and will never change, and it drives me around the flipping bend. We get the schools suck and the companies are horrible and no one gives a crap about West Virginia. We get it.
Except, people don't.
They see the place and the people as dumb hickdom. They don't understand how generational poverty works, or how it feels for a single entity to own your entire life. They have not been raised to think of home as the landscape they live in, rather than "the heart" or whatever most of America thinks. Most of America, of the world, sees West Virginia and laughs at it.
I don't doubt that the mining issues this book explores are exactly what the companies are doing. I've seen it enough to know they have as little respect for the land and the people as rest of middle-class America. This book brings up the fascinating paradox of if you are against nuclear energy because it kills, then why the eff are you not screaming your lungs out about coal, because it's every bit as horrible for the people and environment as nuclear. Why the eff? Go scream, go do something!
At the same time, I was not in love with the writing of this book. I was never going to love the characters--they aren't loveable characters, and they aren't supposed to be. The people they represent in real life are just as hard and unloveable--god but there's a reason no one cares about middle Appalachia. (WV is not southern Appalachia, FYI.)
But laying that aside, I found the plot to be wandery, and I disliked that there was almost no dialogue. Just paragraphs and paragraphs of telling. If ever a book needed a dose of show, it's this one. I skipped the first fifty pages and most chapters that weren't Bant speaking, going back and reading passages if I got confused. So there you have it, I didn't even read this the way the author intended, another reason I can't seem to figure out a rating.
I liked the dialect portrayal for the most part, though I think a couple characters had slightly broader vocabularies than seemed actually in character for them. Still, it helped shape the tone of the book and gave us the feel of it.
But what about the star rating?
I want to say: read this book, it says some really important things about why people stay in bad situations, and why WV matters, and why it's not a joke--the joke is on you for laughing at tragedy. At the same time, I did not particularly enjoy reading this book. So. There you have it. Was it good? I don't know.
August 24, 2021
Strange as This Weather Has Been: A Novel packs a wallop on several levels, and I commend it highly to any serious reader interested in a unique, powerful, and fresh voice in contemporary literature. Amazingly, it is Ann Pancake’s first novel, though she has won several literary accolades, including the Bakeless Fiction Prize for her story collection called Given Ground. The author is a native West Virginian and apparently did a great deal of research and interviews with mountain people whose homes and mountains have been threatened by mountaintop removal mining. But make no mistake —this is not just a diatribe against the horrors of an environmental catastrophe disgused as a novel. It is a story that accurately depicts the lives of West Virginia families who have lived in the mountains for generations and are now facing the utter destruction of their homes and ways of life. The plot twists and turns with drama, lust, love, and violence, punctuated by the fear of imminent black floods from impoundments of toxic blast and slurry.
In this story of Lace and Jimmy Make and their four children, Bant, Dane, Corey, and Tommy, we find a microcosm of what is actually a very real and present situation, told in a way that represents all sides, yet clearly convicts the practice of mountaintop removal mining for the irreparable damage it inflicts on both flora and fauna, and the imminent threat to the health and safety of any humans living in its path. The voice slips back and forth between the family members, so the slices of their differing perspectives add up to a rich and satisfying whole.
Let me first try to share the haunting beauty and utter power of the author’s voice and the conversations of the characters. At first, the mountain language sounds uneducated and crude, but soon I realized their way of talking—about the mountain, their surroundings, and their feelings—conveyed a depth of intelligence and spirituality that too many might dismiss as “redneck” or “hillbilly.” I kept highlighting phrases and sentences that took my breath away in their ability to evoke a sight, smell, feeling, or emotion in a way I would never have thought of, yet was spot on.
In describing how desperately she wanted to get away from home yet how homesick she was, the protagonist, Lace, lay in bed one night unable to sleep “…and at first I thought it was because my mind was confused. Then I realized it was the tangles of my heart. Sweet and hurt…when I left, I lost part of myself, but when I stayed, I couldn’t stretch myself full.” Anyone who has left a rural home will recognize that conflict instantly.
I loved Lace’s memories of her Grandma, who took her into the woods and taught her to feel and absorb the wisdom of the mountain and learn every flower, tree, root, berry, and animal. She learned the hills, the hollows, the creeks, the springs. She spoke of her places, “those places where if you sat quiet, the space dropped away between you and the land…she taught me to let into my insides the real of this place.”
Other lovely sections I highlighted:
“It’s funny, how I remember that time and I don’t. A forgetting with vivid holes.”
“To walk in woods was a prayer.”
“The thing I learned through that loss is that anger is easier than grief.”
The following passage is an example of the totally unorthodox use of words and punctuation that drags the reader into the scene’s experience as forcefully as a 3-D movie. One of Lace’s son’s, Corey, couldn’t get enough of anything mechanical or moving, including the train lumbering up the mountain:
“Corey couldn’t help but draw up closer CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK heatful they feel, and the odors of metal and oil and creosote the train weight pumps from the ties CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK… Corey washed in the breath of the just-made train, him gut-feeling the train breath in a place in his body he didn’t know he had, a place deeper than he knew his body got, the train force humming the teeth in his head, and how the air break between cars staggered him back, the sudden miss of metal making more there the smash of force of the gon following CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK a no time dangle time train wash wafting up and over them time and then. Finished.
“Corey, tottery, gutted Dane behind him yelping does he wnt to get killed, and Corey grappling after it, the last coal car, no caboose, vanishing around a curve. The train in its beautiful passing, past, leaving.”
The “honest complexity” of the characters was noted by Rick Bass on the back cover of the book, and it is another reason this book deserves recognition. The depth of each of the characters is plumbed in a way that suggests the author has a remarkably mature and wide-ranging understanding of human nature and the gamut of human emotion. Through them, the reader is reminded of the sometimes thin line between love and hate, the wounds of childhood cruelties, the heartbreak of a child with mental or physical disabilities, the ugliness of greed, the sweetness of simple things, and the heart-wrenching choices life sometimes forces us to make.
The beautiful and hopeful way the story ends was both satisfying and unexpected. If you decide to read it, I’d love to know what you think. It haunted me for days as I pondered the intertwining of love and hate, physical world and spiritual world, nature and man, and the juxtaposition of futility and hope.
In this story of Lace and Jimmy Make and their four children, Bant, Dane, Corey, and Tommy, we find a microcosm of what is actually a very real and present situation, told in a way that represents all sides, yet clearly convicts the practice of mountaintop removal mining for the irreparable damage it inflicts on both flora and fauna, and the imminent threat to the health and safety of any humans living in its path. The voice slips back and forth between the family members, so the slices of their differing perspectives add up to a rich and satisfying whole.
Let me first try to share the haunting beauty and utter power of the author’s voice and the conversations of the characters. At first, the mountain language sounds uneducated and crude, but soon I realized their way of talking—about the mountain, their surroundings, and their feelings—conveyed a depth of intelligence and spirituality that too many might dismiss as “redneck” or “hillbilly.” I kept highlighting phrases and sentences that took my breath away in their ability to evoke a sight, smell, feeling, or emotion in a way I would never have thought of, yet was spot on.
In describing how desperately she wanted to get away from home yet how homesick she was, the protagonist, Lace, lay in bed one night unable to sleep “…and at first I thought it was because my mind was confused. Then I realized it was the tangles of my heart. Sweet and hurt…when I left, I lost part of myself, but when I stayed, I couldn’t stretch myself full.” Anyone who has left a rural home will recognize that conflict instantly.
I loved Lace’s memories of her Grandma, who took her into the woods and taught her to feel and absorb the wisdom of the mountain and learn every flower, tree, root, berry, and animal. She learned the hills, the hollows, the creeks, the springs. She spoke of her places, “those places where if you sat quiet, the space dropped away between you and the land…she taught me to let into my insides the real of this place.”
Other lovely sections I highlighted:
“It’s funny, how I remember that time and I don’t. A forgetting with vivid holes.”
“To walk in woods was a prayer.”
“The thing I learned through that loss is that anger is easier than grief.”
The following passage is an example of the totally unorthodox use of words and punctuation that drags the reader into the scene’s experience as forcefully as a 3-D movie. One of Lace’s son’s, Corey, couldn’t get enough of anything mechanical or moving, including the train lumbering up the mountain:
“Corey couldn’t help but draw up closer CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK heatful they feel, and the odors of metal and oil and creosote the train weight pumps from the ties CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK… Corey washed in the breath of the just-made train, him gut-feeling the train breath in a place in his body he didn’t know he had, a place deeper than he knew his body got, the train force humming the teeth in his head, and how the air break between cars staggered him back, the sudden miss of metal making more there the smash of force of the gon following CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK a no time dangle time train wash wafting up and over them time and then. Finished.
“Corey, tottery, gutted Dane behind him yelping does he wnt to get killed, and Corey grappling after it, the last coal car, no caboose, vanishing around a curve. The train in its beautiful passing, past, leaving.”
The “honest complexity” of the characters was noted by Rick Bass on the back cover of the book, and it is another reason this book deserves recognition. The depth of each of the characters is plumbed in a way that suggests the author has a remarkably mature and wide-ranging understanding of human nature and the gamut of human emotion. Through them, the reader is reminded of the sometimes thin line between love and hate, the wounds of childhood cruelties, the heartbreak of a child with mental or physical disabilities, the ugliness of greed, the sweetness of simple things, and the heart-wrenching choices life sometimes forces us to make.
The beautiful and hopeful way the story ends was both satisfying and unexpected. If you decide to read it, I’d love to know what you think. It haunted me for days as I pondered the intertwining of love and hate, physical world and spiritual world, nature and man, and the juxtaposition of futility and hope.
July 13, 2021
Following a West Virginian family deeply impacted by the strip mining occuring just beyond their property. Despite the horror of the destruction to their mountains, there is a pull to the woods, hollows and sense of belonging that is hard to walk away from. Life is harsh, brutal and jobs are scarce, but the locals support and care for one another. Despite the blasting and flooding destroying their homes, they stay. This is one reason why: "You work all your life to have you a home. And you want your home to be quiet and peaceable. I built this house, I know how well-made it is, and it's the only thing I got to leave my boys. And here they can take it from me without even walking on my land."Another consequence is a loss of hope as stated here: "Yeah, the impoundment bust scared me, scared me bad, but worse, it made me even more helpless than before. And from helpless, I had learned, what a short step it was to I don't care. How else could you grow up, how you could walk around in your body every day, unless you learned not to care."
A thought provoking novel on multiple levels.
3.5 stars.
A thought provoking novel on multiple levels.
3.5 stars.
August 13, 2014
Sing along with me:
"Almost Heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River."
This book is about those "Country Roads" of West Virginia (or any other part of "Coal Country" in the Southern Appalachian Mountain Chain I would think) and where they take you......just not in the way John Denver intended when you're humming along. Certainly the beauty of the places in that tune are on display in this book, as you follow salt of the earth "Mountain Mommas" through the woods, digging ginseng and finding morels (or Dryland Fish as they are called in my ancestral landscape a little further West)........BUT, there's a lot more in play here.
Primarily, this is a protest piece in objection to the more "modern" techniques of coal harvest which shifted from local men risking their lives underground to the much more aggressive technique of simply mechanically removing the top of the mountains entirely risking not just the safety of the miner but that of everything proximate to the site. First, I'll admit I knew less than I should have about the practices, risks, and collateral damage that ensues when this almost hard to believe approach is used. Some have criticized the book as a whole for being too "preachy" on this topic; I never felt I was being lectured to for being apathetic up to this point. I didn't feel she was trying to convert me into a picket holding protester, more a gentle nudge to expose her issue and raise an awareness while giving me a lot of human story to think about along the way. I did Google images of the "moonscape" she illustrates through word, and her descriptions seem spot on- I'm not a tree hugger, but I get her point.
On the note of character study, through the use of multiple narrators, the plot is very emotional. Exposing the struggles, hopes, opinions, views, and realities faced by so many from this region. If you catch yourself ever thinking "Why wouldn't people CHOOSE to live that way?" this book does a great job establishing the answer.
I would admit, the narrative is dense. It gets a bit jumpy at places- drifting between third and first person, present day and yesteryear, reliable witness and almost fantasy like observers. It lacks chronological patterns that some readers would find distracting. For me, it just made for a "challenging" read in several ways. Would have possibly been a "5 star" with a bit of editorial oversight, but if that would have changed the expression of the topic I understand 100% why the author published with the form and structure that was presented.
This book is about those "Country Roads" of West Virginia (or any other part of "Coal Country" in the Southern Appalachian Mountain Chain I would think) and where they take you......just not in the way John Denver intended when you're humming along. Certainly the beauty of the places in that tune are on display in this book, as you follow salt of the earth "Mountain Mommas" through the woods, digging ginseng and finding morels (or Dryland Fish as they are called in my ancestral landscape a little further West)........BUT, there's a lot more in play here.
Primarily, this is a protest piece in objection to the more "modern" techniques of coal harvest which shifted from local men risking their lives underground to the much more aggressive technique of simply mechanically removing the top of the mountains entirely risking not just the safety of the miner but that of everything proximate to the site. First, I'll admit I knew less than I should have about the practices, risks, and collateral damage that ensues when this almost hard to believe approach is used. Some have criticized the book as a whole for being too "preachy" on this topic; I never felt I was being lectured to for being apathetic up to this point. I didn't feel she was trying to convert me into a picket holding protester, more a gentle nudge to expose her issue and raise an awareness while giving me a lot of human story to think about along the way. I did Google images of the "moonscape" she illustrates through word, and her descriptions seem spot on- I'm not a tree hugger, but I get her point.
On the note of character study, through the use of multiple narrators, the plot is very emotional. Exposing the struggles, hopes, opinions, views, and realities faced by so many from this region. If you catch yourself ever thinking "Why wouldn't people CHOOSE to live that way?" this book does a great job establishing the answer.
I would admit, the narrative is dense. It gets a bit jumpy at places- drifting between third and first person, present day and yesteryear, reliable witness and almost fantasy like observers. It lacks chronological patterns that some readers would find distracting. For me, it just made for a "challenging" read in several ways. Would have possibly been a "5 star" with a bit of editorial oversight, but if that would have changed the expression of the topic I understand 100% why the author published with the form and structure that was presented.
July 1, 2011
I read this book to try to capture MY own feelings and emotions of memories in the West Virginia Mountains. And I think Ann Pancake and I have traveled some of the same winding mountain roads. From Beckley to the New River Gorge familiarity abounded. But no where so much as in the characters we follow from a typically dysfunctional family, especially Lace and Bant who seemed every bit a piece of not only myself but so many of the people I’ve known. Mountain-folk or Flatlanders.
Strange as this Weather Has Been revolves around Lace and Bant primarily. Mother and daughter looking at life in the mountains. And the choices left for their future; or lack there of. And about just how deep roots run. Told in the voices of the family members, SATWHB switches chronology and POV but I had no trouble following where who was where when or how they felt, which was crucial.
Pancake’s prose kept me right there in both imagination and memory and I could smell the loamy humid richness of the dark of the wooded mountain. The family was one million percent believable and relatable. They are neighbors and friends we all know. They are headstrong girls making questionable decisions and they are headstrong boys feeling so inferior their only recourse becomes an over abundance of pride. And I loved each and every one. Despite themselves.
My one criticism is wondering if those not familiar with this region; with abandoned mines and hollers filled with trailers on hewn out ‘shelves’ on the mountain side, would really have enough of a frame of reference to ‘get’ this book. But I’m not sure those without that frame of ref. were Pancakes target audience. Regardless, I say READ IT! Push on through the parts you don’t get, it’ll make enough sense and then you wont miss any of the wonderful
Because you see Strange As This Weather Has Been reads like any best seller list dystopian novel. Except this is REAL. The conditions are REAL. The continued destruction is REAL!!! I could not believe these practices were not punishable by the harshest laws in the universe what mountain top removal strip mining does to IRREPARABLY harm this precious, precious ecosystem. And it is those who still live in nervous silence that I believe Ms Ann Pancake was trying to reach… and I wish I could help her.
I very much loved this book, but in a way you love your teenager when they are being, well, teenagers: sometimes with difficulty. This book is emotionally challenging but more than worth the effort. I doubt it will leave you unchanged.
My Ancestors settled an area called Panther Mountain. I don’t know yet where that is today exactly, but I hope Ann’s book helps save it.
And, God Forbid, it doesn’t. I will trust Ann’s skill as a talented writer to keeping the memory of those who lived the unique life of West Virginia in all her shame and glory.
Strange as this Weather Has Been revolves around Lace and Bant primarily. Mother and daughter looking at life in the mountains. And the choices left for their future; or lack there of. And about just how deep roots run. Told in the voices of the family members, SATWHB switches chronology and POV but I had no trouble following where who was where when or how they felt, which was crucial.
Pancake’s prose kept me right there in both imagination and memory and I could smell the loamy humid richness of the dark of the wooded mountain. The family was one million percent believable and relatable. They are neighbors and friends we all know. They are headstrong girls making questionable decisions and they are headstrong boys feeling so inferior their only recourse becomes an over abundance of pride. And I loved each and every one. Despite themselves.
My one criticism is wondering if those not familiar with this region; with abandoned mines and hollers filled with trailers on hewn out ‘shelves’ on the mountain side, would really have enough of a frame of reference to ‘get’ this book. But I’m not sure those without that frame of ref. were Pancakes target audience. Regardless, I say READ IT! Push on through the parts you don’t get, it’ll make enough sense and then you wont miss any of the wonderful
Because you see Strange As This Weather Has Been reads like any best seller list dystopian novel. Except this is REAL. The conditions are REAL. The continued destruction is REAL!!! I could not believe these practices were not punishable by the harshest laws in the universe what mountain top removal strip mining does to IRREPARABLY harm this precious, precious ecosystem. And it is those who still live in nervous silence that I believe Ms Ann Pancake was trying to reach… and I wish I could help her.
I very much loved this book, but in a way you love your teenager when they are being, well, teenagers: sometimes with difficulty. This book is emotionally challenging but more than worth the effort. I doubt it will leave you unchanged.
My Ancestors settled an area called Panther Mountain. I don’t know yet where that is today exactly, but I hope Ann’s book helps save it.
And, God Forbid, it doesn’t. I will trust Ann’s skill as a talented writer to keeping the memory of those who lived the unique life of West Virginia in all her shame and glory.
September 23, 2013
I feel I should begin this review by saying that I am a native of West Virginia, of southern West Virginia, to be exact. Living in southern West Virginia basically means being a resident of the coalfields, and this book is about exactly that.
Lace is a character I could feel a strong connection to, a powerful voice that resonated with me and made me want to know her life's story. Pancake captures perfectly this image of how life in the region can be. Not to say that all of us in West Virginia are college drop-outs, or even to say that we have all had a similar experience. But this book truly does capture what life here is like for some.
Sometimes the choices we make, or the circumstances we are born into, can color our lives in a way we are not necessarily proud of. Lace is not proud of every decision she has ever made, but the point is that she does what she feels is right, even if, being human, that does not always work out the way she hopes it will.
The narrative style is unusual but very similar to Denise Giardina's "Storming Heaven" and "The Unquiet Earth." It is full of imagery, both lovely and grotesque. If some things seem macabre, I think it's important to remember that life itself is sometimes like that. It is not a story to make you feel good, but rather a story to express the frustration of living in the Appalachian region with all of the destruction that surrounds us, of being pressured to leave, and of being unable to save the land we feel we are connected to.
Anyone who has ever seen a mountaintop removal mine site knows that Pancake has managed to describe it in the most accurate of words: "moonside down." Truly a book that speaks to those of us who live in this destruction, who look on it with horror and cannot seem to name the way we feel. Reading this book reminded me of the whole in my heart that I felt when I looked upon an utterly destroyed mountain for the first time, and though it renewed the ache, it also renewed my desire to fight for justice in my home state and the surrounding states.
Lace is a character I could feel a strong connection to, a powerful voice that resonated with me and made me want to know her life's story. Pancake captures perfectly this image of how life in the region can be. Not to say that all of us in West Virginia are college drop-outs, or even to say that we have all had a similar experience. But this book truly does capture what life here is like for some.
Sometimes the choices we make, or the circumstances we are born into, can color our lives in a way we are not necessarily proud of. Lace is not proud of every decision she has ever made, but the point is that she does what she feels is right, even if, being human, that does not always work out the way she hopes it will.
The narrative style is unusual but very similar to Denise Giardina's "Storming Heaven" and "The Unquiet Earth." It is full of imagery, both lovely and grotesque. If some things seem macabre, I think it's important to remember that life itself is sometimes like that. It is not a story to make you feel good, but rather a story to express the frustration of living in the Appalachian region with all of the destruction that surrounds us, of being pressured to leave, and of being unable to save the land we feel we are connected to.
Anyone who has ever seen a mountaintop removal mine site knows that Pancake has managed to describe it in the most accurate of words: "moonside down." Truly a book that speaks to those of us who live in this destruction, who look on it with horror and cannot seem to name the way we feel. Reading this book reminded me of the whole in my heart that I felt when I looked upon an utterly destroyed mountain for the first time, and though it renewed the ache, it also renewed my desire to fight for justice in my home state and the surrounding states.
December 2, 2019
This novel gave me a powerful understanding of growing up poor in the mountains of West Virginia. It concerns a community that is being dominated by a large company tearing apart the surrounding mountains while strip mining for coal. In a story that has become almost too familiar today, residents must choose between leaving, working for the company, or standing up to them in an effort to protect the environment. The author uses such an abundance of metaphors and colorful expressions that the book is a slow read.
The criticism is the book's structure, with its confusing jumps between the characters' points of view. I'm glad I read the book, but at times it was a struggle.
The criticism is the book's structure, with its confusing jumps between the characters' points of view. I'm glad I read the book, but at times it was a struggle.
July 20, 2016
Powerful Appalachian fiction. Really illuminates the lives of a fictional hill country family as they deal with economic hard times, and the destruction of the environment from coal mining.
She uses an interesting narrative style where the chapters feature different members of the family as narrators.
She uses an interesting narrative style where the chapters feature different members of the family as narrators.
August 24, 2017
Dark but good.
April 15, 2023
Strange as this Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake (Shoemaker & Hoard 2007) (Fiction) (3765).
This is outstanding Southern fiction.
Ann Pancake has written a novel about the practice of “mountaintop removal” coal mining in her native West Virginia. Underground extraction or even strip mining for coal, a product which befouls and poisons the environment both during extraction and then later when it is burned for use, is both short-sighted and of little benefit to any entity other than the mine owners. But this book is about something much more insidious than the wreckage of land beneath which seams of coal are extracted.
In mountaintop removal mining, the top of a mountain is literally blasted away. Every living thing is killed. The top layer of the earth’s crust - where all life exists: plants, trees, humans, birds, fish, bacteria - are blown up. The dirt, the rocks, and the trees are then bulldozed into refuse piles hundreds of feet high. After the coal has been extracted, the piles are pushed smooth once again. What remains is kilotons of dead dirt and rock devoid of life, much like volcanic ejecta from the bowels of the earth.
Strange as this Weather Has Been is the story of a family trying to hang on as the world around them is poisoned and killed. Author Ann Pancake has woven a tale which is both heartbreaking and heart wrenching.
I’m already a fan of Ann Pancake’s writing, and I have been since I stumbled across her brilliant short story collection Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley (2015).
Strange as this Weather Has Been is even better. Her voice in this novel reminds me of two of the most moving and evocative pieces of fiction that I've ever read. This tale calls to mind the stomach-churning hopelessness and dread that accrues in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and the hallucinatory madness splattered across William Golding’s Lord of the Flies as Simon faced “The Beast.”
Steinbeck, Golding, and now Ann Pancake each have proven an exceptional ability to evoke overwhelming emotion in their prose.
Strange as this Weather Has Been is easily one of the best pieces of fiction I have ever enjoyed.
My rating: 8/10, finished 4/10/23. (EDITED 4/15/23 to add the purchase of a new PB copy from Amazon 0n 4/11/23. PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
January 8, 2010
This is one of the best novels I've ever read. Very developed and interesting characters, a setting that comes alive in sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feels, and a sense of tension that permeates the novel. While not plot-oriented, the action is important, and while I didn't necessarily find myself needing to know what happened next, I wanted to find out what was going on with the characters next.
The characters are the strongest part of this book. They all have strong voices, even the minor characters, and are weird and unique without being ridiculous or too far outside the kinds of people you know or can imagine knowing.
The format is a series of chapters that alternate POV, each chapter told through the lens of a different character (some in first person, others in third). This reminds me of Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury," but I don't know that there a lot of other similarities. Perhaps both exhibit experimentation while still being accessible. Perhaps both can be said to depict the decline of a family--though they are two very different kinds of families.
The other book I think of, because of its focus on multiple characters in the same setting, is Anderson's Winesburg, OH, though again the similarity is probably more superficial. Setting is important to both, so that the place is a character in its own right. Setting is the second strongest part of this book, the way it is described so vividly, and becomes such a huge part of the characters' psyches (for good or for bad).
I can't think of a whole lot more to say, other than that this is a work of immense complexity and dark beauty that makes me re-evaluate my political, personal, and literary assumptions.
The characters are the strongest part of this book. They all have strong voices, even the minor characters, and are weird and unique without being ridiculous or too far outside the kinds of people you know or can imagine knowing.
The format is a series of chapters that alternate POV, each chapter told through the lens of a different character (some in first person, others in third). This reminds me of Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury," but I don't know that there a lot of other similarities. Perhaps both exhibit experimentation while still being accessible. Perhaps both can be said to depict the decline of a family--though they are two very different kinds of families.
The other book I think of, because of its focus on multiple characters in the same setting, is Anderson's Winesburg, OH, though again the similarity is probably more superficial. Setting is important to both, so that the place is a character in its own right. Setting is the second strongest part of this book, the way it is described so vividly, and becomes such a huge part of the characters' psyches (for good or for bad).
I can't think of a whole lot more to say, other than that this is a work of immense complexity and dark beauty that makes me re-evaluate my political, personal, and literary assumptions.
February 6, 2014
First of all, if the word "fated" is used to describe a character on the back cover of a book, you the reader will instantly know that character is going to die. The only other option is that they'll be told they're secretly the heir to the throne of the fabled kingdom of Horktonia, or something similar, but that doesn't happen in realistic novels. So the option is death. Great job, blurb-writers. That said, I did predict who was going to die maybe halfway through the book, and not actually based on the back cover, but on the particular mindset portrayed in that character.
I am generally not a fan of books with chapters told from different characters' points of view. Neither am I particularly happy to realize that I'm reading something that's largely a mouthpiece for a particular political agenda, whether or not I agree with it. And yet this went past just rubbing me the wrong way and hit something deeper anyway.
The whole point of the book is that strip mining destroys the environment, people's lives (actual, mental, and in terms of property and money), homes (ditto) and full towns. The high contrast between descriptions of the mountains as they were originally and as they are after having their tops blown off and the woods around them filled with slag and industrial waste is very striking. The worst part (possibly; there are a lot of worst parts) is that the people doing the mining are depicted as also destroying themselves along with everyone/thing else.
Let's just say that if the recent West Virginia water contamination scandal surprised you, maybe you should read something like this.
I am generally not a fan of books with chapters told from different characters' points of view. Neither am I particularly happy to realize that I'm reading something that's largely a mouthpiece for a particular political agenda, whether or not I agree with it. And yet this went past just rubbing me the wrong way and hit something deeper anyway.
The whole point of the book is that strip mining destroys the environment, people's lives (actual, mental, and in terms of property and money), homes (ditto) and full towns. The high contrast between descriptions of the mountains as they were originally and as they are after having their tops blown off and the woods around them filled with slag and industrial waste is very striking. The worst part (possibly; there are a lot of worst parts) is that the people doing the mining are depicted as also destroying themselves along with everyone/thing else.
Let's just say that if the recent West Virginia water contamination scandal surprised you, maybe you should read something like this.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 13, 2009
This is one of the best books I've read in a long time. The writing is absolutely amazing. Pancake's descriptions are so vivid and poetic that I found myself marking things on almost every page, sometimes every paragraph. The book also gives a face to the environmental tragedy going on in Appalachia today caused by mountaintop removal coal mining. The characters ring true and their plight is all too real.
Many people in Appalachia who live near mountaintop removal sites (some of my family included) face many of the same dangers and difficult choices that the characters in this book do. For this reason, the book is a very important one to read. The characters are fictional, but the situation is not, and it's about time this issue was looked at as the human tragedy it is.
Pancake has pulled off something quite remarkable in crafting such a beautiful piece of writing out of such an ugly, ugly issue. Her prose reads like poetry, but at the same time exposes the naked greed of coal companies and the complicated relationship Appalachians have with their land.
Many people in Appalachia who live near mountaintop removal sites (some of my family included) face many of the same dangers and difficult choices that the characters in this book do. For this reason, the book is a very important one to read. The characters are fictional, but the situation is not, and it's about time this issue was looked at as the human tragedy it is.
Pancake has pulled off something quite remarkable in crafting such a beautiful piece of writing out of such an ugly, ugly issue. Her prose reads like poetry, but at the same time exposes the naked greed of coal companies and the complicated relationship Appalachians have with their land.
March 6, 2023
We drive through West Virginia several times a year on our way from Maryland to Ohio. I will never again look at the countryside and those mountains in quite the same way. This isn't just a novel; it's a profound, transformational book about grief and hope.
In addition to being an emotionally searing multigenerational story about a West Virginia family, this is a story about the land—specifically how that land has been systematically destroyed to dig coal out of the mountains through mountaintop strip mining.
Written by Ann Pancake, this is primarily the story of Lace and her daughter, Bant. Lace is smart—so smart she was able to go to college at West Virginia University, but dropped out after one semester when she becomes pregnant (with Bant). The daddy, Jimmy Make, is only 15, a sophomore in high school. But Lace wasn't happy at WVU, missing the mountains, woods, and land on which she was born and raised. So home she comes. She and Jimmy Make create a life together, but the strip mining on the mountain above their family land causes not only flooding without trees or bushes to stop the uncontrolled waters as they pound into and destroy homes, but also the slurry runoff that is poisoning the water and earth and killing the mountain wildlife. In addition the threat of a catastrophic flood every time it rains, the blasting on top of the mountain is cracking the walls and foundations of the homes in the hollow just like Lace and Jimmy Make's marriage is cracking. Life is precarious. At age 15, Bant gets a summer job painting at a motel where out-of-state union scabs live, and she gets sweet on one of them. Meanwhile, Lace, who works full-time at the Dairy Queen, has become an activist, trying to make a difference before the mining kills them all, but activism, she quickly learns, is dangerous work.
The land—that is, the setting and the very realistic sense of place—is just as much a character in the novel as are Lace and Bant, so much so that the writing will awaken all your senses to this mountain that was once lush and beautiful and is now bare and toxic.
The story is told in a kind of stream of consciousness in the first-person voice from the points of view of Lace and Bant, as well as the third-person voice of two of Lace and Jimmy Make's sons, Dane, 12, and Corey, 10, and occasionally other characters. As their house teeters, the little boys play outside in the contaminated muck and mess, collecting the trash that was brought down with the floods, a bleak and dismal playground fraught with hazards seen and unseen. Corey, along with the baby Tommy, who is 6, are wild and uncontrollable. Dane, with a deep-seated fear that fills him with anxiety, is a sensitive soul, who is convinced he is living in the End Times.
This is an exceptional, masterfully written book about loss, tragedy, and hopelessness, but in the end, there is a bit of redemption through knowledge.
In addition to being an emotionally searing multigenerational story about a West Virginia family, this is a story about the land—specifically how that land has been systematically destroyed to dig coal out of the mountains through mountaintop strip mining.
Written by Ann Pancake, this is primarily the story of Lace and her daughter, Bant. Lace is smart—so smart she was able to go to college at West Virginia University, but dropped out after one semester when she becomes pregnant (with Bant). The daddy, Jimmy Make, is only 15, a sophomore in high school. But Lace wasn't happy at WVU, missing the mountains, woods, and land on which she was born and raised. So home she comes. She and Jimmy Make create a life together, but the strip mining on the mountain above their family land causes not only flooding without trees or bushes to stop the uncontrolled waters as they pound into and destroy homes, but also the slurry runoff that is poisoning the water and earth and killing the mountain wildlife. In addition the threat of a catastrophic flood every time it rains, the blasting on top of the mountain is cracking the walls and foundations of the homes in the hollow just like Lace and Jimmy Make's marriage is cracking. Life is precarious. At age 15, Bant gets a summer job painting at a motel where out-of-state union scabs live, and she gets sweet on one of them. Meanwhile, Lace, who works full-time at the Dairy Queen, has become an activist, trying to make a difference before the mining kills them all, but activism, she quickly learns, is dangerous work.
The land—that is, the setting and the very realistic sense of place—is just as much a character in the novel as are Lace and Bant, so much so that the writing will awaken all your senses to this mountain that was once lush and beautiful and is now bare and toxic.
The story is told in a kind of stream of consciousness in the first-person voice from the points of view of Lace and Bant, as well as the third-person voice of two of Lace and Jimmy Make's sons, Dane, 12, and Corey, 10, and occasionally other characters. As their house teeters, the little boys play outside in the contaminated muck and mess, collecting the trash that was brought down with the floods, a bleak and dismal playground fraught with hazards seen and unseen. Corey, along with the baby Tommy, who is 6, are wild and uncontrollable. Dane, with a deep-seated fear that fills him with anxiety, is a sensitive soul, who is convinced he is living in the End Times.
This is an exceptional, masterfully written book about loss, tragedy, and hopelessness, but in the end, there is a bit of redemption through knowledge.
September 8, 2025
This book reads as a love letter, an apology note, and a warning to the people facing the brunt of environmental destruction. Pancake artfully describes what it means to love a place, to be apart of a place that is not only disappearing before your eyes but might kill you in the process.
Where the first half builds your appreciation for the West Virgina mountains and hollows, and the deep connection felt by the protagonists; the second half explores the question of how, why, and when to fight for it. Some of the characters did feel less attached than others, but Pancake grows sympathy for how each of them respond to impossible circumstances. I learned so much, and it has and will prompt more learning about the failure of mining companies, the government, and americans outside of Appalachia. The writing balances these big themes without compromising the characters day to day, and shows that amid big grief and loss, there’s so much little joy, pain, and love.
“In times like these, you have to grow big enough inside to hold both the loss and the hope”
“This place not pure, and that somehow makes him more tender for it, makes him love it deeper, for its vulnerability, for its weariness and its endurance. This place so subtly beautiful, so overlaid with doom. A haunt, a film coating all of it. Killed again and again, and each time, the place rising back on its haunches, diminished, but once more alive… Only this, Avery knows, will finally beat the land”
Where the first half builds your appreciation for the West Virgina mountains and hollows, and the deep connection felt by the protagonists; the second half explores the question of how, why, and when to fight for it. Some of the characters did feel less attached than others, but Pancake grows sympathy for how each of them respond to impossible circumstances. I learned so much, and it has and will prompt more learning about the failure of mining companies, the government, and americans outside of Appalachia. The writing balances these big themes without compromising the characters day to day, and shows that amid big grief and loss, there’s so much little joy, pain, and love.
“In times like these, you have to grow big enough inside to hold both the loss and the hope”
“This place not pure, and that somehow makes him more tender for it, makes him love it deeper, for its vulnerability, for its weariness and its endurance. This place so subtly beautiful, so overlaid with doom. A haunt, a film coating all of it. Killed again and again, and each time, the place rising back on its haunches, diminished, but once more alive… Only this, Avery knows, will finally beat the land”
June 30, 2025
3.5 stars
Across the board, I found this to be a difficult book to read. The language of the descriptions did not make sense to me and I kept having to reread stuff to try to make a picture. The character development was not even also— I found lace and bant to be interesting, thoughtful characters, and Corey and Dane were on developed so much. So this ended up being a terribly slow read for me.
Mountaintop removal is a crime.
One amazing quote to remember:
“In times like these you have to grow big enough to hold both the loss and the hope.”
Across the board, I found this to be a difficult book to read. The language of the descriptions did not make sense to me and I kept having to reread stuff to try to make a picture. The character development was not even also— I found lace and bant to be interesting, thoughtful characters, and Corey and Dane were on developed so much. So this ended up being a terribly slow read for me.
Mountaintop removal is a crime.
One amazing quote to remember:
“In times like these you have to grow big enough to hold both the loss and the hope.”
July 6, 2021
This book made me cry. Ann Pancake personifies the tensions of paralyzing resentment, righteous anger, love and grief, and polishes them into a glimmer of hope. Emotion is built through telling details and word play that characterize and personalize belonging, loss, and hope in the face of devastation. She uses idioms and rhythm in ways that the words themselves embody the story, as they tell the story.
The central character, Lace, uses sensory words and active verbs to depict her felt, physical connection to the mountains. She eventually understands her belonging as a tie to people: ancestors and homeplaces. When she is elsewhere—a brief stint in Morgantown for college, a disastrous move for her husband’s work—she loses her bearings and her identity: “[T]he two years we spent in North Carolina were the emptiest and the least real.” (190) When her mother dies suddenly, she sees “the nothingness that North Carolina made me,” (198) and insists on returning to West Virginia.
Throughout the book, characters refer to moving elsewhere as “leaving out.” That extra word, “out,” expresses the pull between their mountain identity and the hope of living free from the threat of ruination and death. The character Avery moved to Ohio to escape his hometown. He returns to convince his elderly mother to “leave out” and is once again claimed by “the shriek and chung of the plants crowding around . . . the insects as plant voices, and the humidity, which cramps too, he feels as plant breath.” (210) Avery has worked hard to cut ties, but he’s pulled right back by the vegetation itself. He relives the deadly flood that he survived as a twelve-year-old boy in harrowing detail.
The mountains, Yellowroot and Cherryboy, are not mere victims. They are active participants in the story. Bant, Lace’s fifteen-year-old daughter, tells us about Yellowroot in exquisitely felt detail:
“Those places where if you sat quiet, the space dropped away between you and the land. . . . Like the heart of the rhododendron thicket, the limbs bendy and matty and strong, it was like being inside some kind of body there. It felt animal live. . . . I’d feel closest in spring, before the leaves came all the way out, when the mountains show their hope with little color patches, redbud and dogwood, dogwood and redbud, the roll of the words in your mouth. And if you look real close, how all the leaves are tightly curled, bulging just a little beyond bud—leaf-wait, I’d call it. And inside them, right before they bust out, you see what looks like a feather.” (35-36)
Two instances of the verb “feel” follow a body metaphor to emphasize how grounding the place is for her. The reversing repetition of “redbud and dogwood” conjured the image of fuchsia and white blossoms dotting a mountainside, an impression emphasized by the verb, “roll,” just after. The “mountains show their hope” personifies them as kin. The lovely “leaf-wait” and fresh image of budding leaves as feathers emphasize the wonder and humility of her love. A connection born of deep attention and noticing.
If Lace understands her belonging viscerally, for her Uncle Mogey it is something spiritual, metaphysical, guided by an all-pervasive consciousness. He speaks of “That feel you get when you sudden-spy, as you’re moving, the deep green leaf of a ramp. The crinkle of a morel. Presents the woods give you just for paying attention.” (170) “Sudden-spy” is another marvelous coinage that conveys the delight of discovery.
Mogey’s single chapter is a fine depiction of someone trying to integrate mystical experiences into received culture. He provides a strong moral core to the story and a welcome glimmer of hope. He holds the tension of opposites and integrates learned beliefs with the direct experience of indigenous understanding. These are critical faculties needed to resist horrors like mountaintop removal and envision life-affirming futures.
The central character, Lace, uses sensory words and active verbs to depict her felt, physical connection to the mountains. She eventually understands her belonging as a tie to people: ancestors and homeplaces. When she is elsewhere—a brief stint in Morgantown for college, a disastrous move for her husband’s work—she loses her bearings and her identity: “[T]he two years we spent in North Carolina were the emptiest and the least real.” (190) When her mother dies suddenly, she sees “the nothingness that North Carolina made me,” (198) and insists on returning to West Virginia.
Throughout the book, characters refer to moving elsewhere as “leaving out.” That extra word, “out,” expresses the pull between their mountain identity and the hope of living free from the threat of ruination and death. The character Avery moved to Ohio to escape his hometown. He returns to convince his elderly mother to “leave out” and is once again claimed by “the shriek and chung of the plants crowding around . . . the insects as plant voices, and the humidity, which cramps too, he feels as plant breath.” (210) Avery has worked hard to cut ties, but he’s pulled right back by the vegetation itself. He relives the deadly flood that he survived as a twelve-year-old boy in harrowing detail.
The mountains, Yellowroot and Cherryboy, are not mere victims. They are active participants in the story. Bant, Lace’s fifteen-year-old daughter, tells us about Yellowroot in exquisitely felt detail:
“Those places where if you sat quiet, the space dropped away between you and the land. . . . Like the heart of the rhododendron thicket, the limbs bendy and matty and strong, it was like being inside some kind of body there. It felt animal live. . . . I’d feel closest in spring, before the leaves came all the way out, when the mountains show their hope with little color patches, redbud and dogwood, dogwood and redbud, the roll of the words in your mouth. And if you look real close, how all the leaves are tightly curled, bulging just a little beyond bud—leaf-wait, I’d call it. And inside them, right before they bust out, you see what looks like a feather.” (35-36)
Two instances of the verb “feel” follow a body metaphor to emphasize how grounding the place is for her. The reversing repetition of “redbud and dogwood” conjured the image of fuchsia and white blossoms dotting a mountainside, an impression emphasized by the verb, “roll,” just after. The “mountains show their hope” personifies them as kin. The lovely “leaf-wait” and fresh image of budding leaves as feathers emphasize the wonder and humility of her love. A connection born of deep attention and noticing.
If Lace understands her belonging viscerally, for her Uncle Mogey it is something spiritual, metaphysical, guided by an all-pervasive consciousness. He speaks of “That feel you get when you sudden-spy, as you’re moving, the deep green leaf of a ramp. The crinkle of a morel. Presents the woods give you just for paying attention.” (170) “Sudden-spy” is another marvelous coinage that conveys the delight of discovery.
Mogey’s single chapter is a fine depiction of someone trying to integrate mystical experiences into received culture. He provides a strong moral core to the story and a welcome glimmer of hope. He holds the tension of opposites and integrates learned beliefs with the direct experience of indigenous understanding. These are critical faculties needed to resist horrors like mountaintop removal and envision life-affirming futures.
April 5, 2014
A successful protest novel for me (Pancake got me looking up resistance groups working against mountain-top removal); a lot of yearning in this book; I could feel it consistently; felt the homesickness running through it; had to play Townes Van Zandt on repeat after finishing. As a West Virginian, I was grateful for the painful accounts Pancake includes (re-imagined from interviews) about the Buffalo Creek mining disaster, in the 70s, I think. I never realized the extent of the horror and, though it shouldn’t surprise me, I’m amazed at the never-ending story of arrogant pillaging committed by these mining companies.
I like the multiple narrators very much. These are characters that will stick with me – Pancake has a way with vocal registers – idiosyncratic and well-tuned – and I can sense these folks living and breathing beside me:
10-year-old Corey watching the train cars carrying coal:
“So just-out-of-the-factory brilliant Corey wondered was there a train assembly line up the hollow chock chock chock chock them passing beautiful. Corey couldn’t help but draw up closer CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK heatful they feel, and the odors of metal and oil and creosote the train weight pumps from the ties CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK Corey creeping up to where he could no longer hear Dane’s yells, Corey washed in the breath of the just-made train, him gut-feeling the train breath in a place in his body he didn’t know he had, a place deeper than he knew his body got, the train force humming the teeth in his head, and how the air breaks between cars staggered him back, the sudden miss of metal making more there the smash force of the gon following CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK a no time dangle time train wash wafting up and over them time and then. Finished.” (30-1)
15-year-old Bant whose adolescent ache is real, real:
“The end of something. It just always was. And what was it to grow up in this ending place, butting always against that, what? All those little half-ghosts, hovering. Glaze out the thinking part of your mind and you can see them all over the hills.” (317)
Uncle Mogey, a kind of woods-mystic:
“…now I know people not from here probably don’t understand our feeling for these hills. Our love for land not spectacular. Our mountains are not like Western ones, those jagged awesome ones, your eyes always pulled to their tops. But that is the difference, I decided. In the West, the mountains are mostly horizon. We live in our mountains. It’s not just the tops, but the sides that hold us.” (173)
I like the multiple narrators very much. These are characters that will stick with me – Pancake has a way with vocal registers – idiosyncratic and well-tuned – and I can sense these folks living and breathing beside me:
10-year-old Corey watching the train cars carrying coal:
“So just-out-of-the-factory brilliant Corey wondered was there a train assembly line up the hollow chock chock chock chock them passing beautiful. Corey couldn’t help but draw up closer CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK heatful they feel, and the odors of metal and oil and creosote the train weight pumps from the ties CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK Corey creeping up to where he could no longer hear Dane’s yells, Corey washed in the breath of the just-made train, him gut-feeling the train breath in a place in his body he didn’t know he had, a place deeper than he knew his body got, the train force humming the teeth in his head, and how the air breaks between cars staggered him back, the sudden miss of metal making more there the smash force of the gon following CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK a no time dangle time train wash wafting up and over them time and then. Finished.” (30-1)
15-year-old Bant whose adolescent ache is real, real:
“The end of something. It just always was. And what was it to grow up in this ending place, butting always against that, what? All those little half-ghosts, hovering. Glaze out the thinking part of your mind and you can see them all over the hills.” (317)
Uncle Mogey, a kind of woods-mystic:
“…now I know people not from here probably don’t understand our feeling for these hills. Our love for land not spectacular. Our mountains are not like Western ones, those jagged awesome ones, your eyes always pulled to their tops. But that is the difference, I decided. In the West, the mountains are mostly horizon. We live in our mountains. It’s not just the tops, but the sides that hold us.” (173)
March 4, 2008
Ann Pancake's story of a young girl in West Virginia coal country who gets pregnant, drops out of college and ends up in a life that, from the outside, might look like a failure. I say from the outside because the girl, Lace, has such a relationship with nature — stronger, it seems, than with her husband or children or any person — that her return to "her land" and her fight to stay there in the face of strip mining and the death of one of her boys almost feels like a victory.
As someone from that "outside" I wasn't always sure how to feel about Lace. She disparages others for thinking of her as a hick, but she's the one who decides to give almost no effort when ever she moves out of her comfort zone.
The one thing she takes great initiative about is fighting for the preservation of the mountains that are being strip mined and destroyed. It's a noble goal, and you feel for people who are watching their land and sometimes their lives get taken away from them with no more than an eye batted by the companies responsible or the "outside" world.
At the same time, why couldn't she put that effort into her children, who grow up basically without her? Or her marriage, which she resigns herself to and then resents for the rest of her life?
The end of this book feels inevitable, and sad for it. Some of us outsiders want to understand, but people like Lace make it hard.
As someone from that "outside" I wasn't always sure how to feel about Lace. She disparages others for thinking of her as a hick, but she's the one who decides to give almost no effort when ever she moves out of her comfort zone.
The one thing she takes great initiative about is fighting for the preservation of the mountains that are being strip mined and destroyed. It's a noble goal, and you feel for people who are watching their land and sometimes their lives get taken away from them with no more than an eye batted by the companies responsible or the "outside" world.
At the same time, why couldn't she put that effort into her children, who grow up basically without her? Or her marriage, which she resigns herself to and then resents for the rest of her life?
The end of this book feels inevitable, and sad for it. Some of us outsiders want to understand, but people like Lace make it hard.
March 5, 2019
I cannot wait to read this book again. Ann Pancake manages to paint a beautiful picture of the stunning, unstoppable, tragic landscape that is Appalachia (more specifically the coal regions of West Virginia) without relying on stereotypes and conventions. She spins the tale of one complex, headstrong family living through the degradation and destruction of the home that they simultaneously love and hate. It is so much more than a coming-of-age tale for every character involved. It showcases the stubborn, relentless force of nature that is Appalachia and it's people. I am excited to pick up her next book.
August 3, 2017
This book has been on my to-read list for years. I don't remember how it came to me but I am so glad it did. I've never read something centered in West Virginia and that particularly centers the stories of miners, and I learned a lot from this book. Not having grown up in that world it is so easy to point fingers and wonder: why the coal addiction? Can't the people living there see how damaging it is? That they're paying the price?
The short answer to that is no, they can't - because it's much more complicated than that. This book does a beautiful job of elucidating the ways that the coal industry has held West Virginia (and the rest of Appalachia) by the balls from day one. When your family has over 100 years invested in the land that the industry is trying to destroy, how do you just leave and let it happen? How do you speak up when you might be killed for your opinions? Where else do you work when your kids are hungry, you live in extreme poverty, and there is literally nowhere else that pays the bills? In many ways the condition is similar to violent gang-ridden neighborhoods, except this time the gang is a multi-billion dollar corporation who receives innumerable tax breaks and political cover. Strange As This Weather Has Been is a beautiful novel, if you want that, but it's also a great master class on the issues surrounding the coal industry, strip mining, white poverty, and much more.
The short answer to that is no, they can't - because it's much more complicated than that. This book does a beautiful job of elucidating the ways that the coal industry has held West Virginia (and the rest of Appalachia) by the balls from day one. When your family has over 100 years invested in the land that the industry is trying to destroy, how do you just leave and let it happen? How do you speak up when you might be killed for your opinions? Where else do you work when your kids are hungry, you live in extreme poverty, and there is literally nowhere else that pays the bills? In many ways the condition is similar to violent gang-ridden neighborhoods, except this time the gang is a multi-billion dollar corporation who receives innumerable tax breaks and political cover. Strange As This Weather Has Been is a beautiful novel, if you want that, but it's also a great master class on the issues surrounding the coal industry, strip mining, white poverty, and much more.
February 15, 2021
Again, I had to read this novel for one of my graduate classes and I'm so happy I did. I couldn't read it fast enough. I'm usually not a fan of contemporary fiction because it's usually deeply, deeply depressing (and this novel was), but the writing and the characters have a pull to them that truly bring you deep inside the story. Maybe I felt so pulled to this novel because I grew up in a corner of Pennsylvania too close to West Virginia to be considered PA-I'm not sure, but this novel was powerful and moving in the worst and best ways. The ending left me whip-lashed, with an aching heart, with a bad taste in my mouth. The mundanity of these characters' lives is never boring, but they aren't exactly likable either. My heart still burns for Dane and for poor Bant. Even more depressing is knowing that Pancake based this story off of interviews she had done of West Virginians with first hand experiences of the mining disasters littered across the state. Even worse, the governments dismissal.
I'm glad to have read this novel and know it will haunt me for much longer than the week I will get to spend with it.
I'm glad to have read this novel and know it will haunt me for much longer than the week I will get to spend with it.
May 29, 2022
I always looked at mountain top removal sites and felt sadness for the land but no idea what it would feel like to actually live in it. Until now.
Through the stories of one fictional family living in the hollow below a mountain top removal site, the author transports you to that hollow, all they feel, all they see, and all they fear. The weight is sobering and ongoing.
Quotes that resonated and made me think of all my family’s generations living in the (southern) Appalachian mountains.
… I did know you’d have to come up in these hills to understand what I meant. Growing up shouldered in them, them forever around your ribs, your hips, how they hold you, sit astraddle, giving you always for good or for bad, the sense of being held.
Our mountains are not like Western ones, those jagged awesome ones, your eyes always pulled to their tops. But that is the difference, I decided. In the West, the mountains are mostly horizon. We live in our mountains. It’s not just the tops, but the sides that hold us.
How could only me and my thirty-three years on that land make me feel for if what I did? No, I had to be drawing down out of blood and from memories that belonged to more than me. I had to. It must have come from those that bore me, and from those that bore them.
Through the stories of one fictional family living in the hollow below a mountain top removal site, the author transports you to that hollow, all they feel, all they see, and all they fear. The weight is sobering and ongoing.
Quotes that resonated and made me think of all my family’s generations living in the (southern) Appalachian mountains.
… I did know you’d have to come up in these hills to understand what I meant. Growing up shouldered in them, them forever around your ribs, your hips, how they hold you, sit astraddle, giving you always for good or for bad, the sense of being held.
Our mountains are not like Western ones, those jagged awesome ones, your eyes always pulled to their tops. But that is the difference, I decided. In the West, the mountains are mostly horizon. We live in our mountains. It’s not just the tops, but the sides that hold us.
How could only me and my thirty-three years on that land make me feel for if what I did? No, I had to be drawing down out of blood and from memories that belonged to more than me. I had to. It must have come from those that bore me, and from those that bore them.
April 17, 2023
This book is hard to think about because I absolutely loved the beginning, and then it sort of lost me at the end. I also think its message is more impressive than its book-ness if that makes sense. I learned so much about mountain-top removal mining, which is horrifying, and what it really means to live in a place that's being actively destroyed.
Sometimes, though, it felt like the book was just dumping information on me instead of telling a story. The moments that prioritize interpersonal relationships or more personal reflections on the land are the strongest for me. Lace and Jimmy Make's relationship is just heartbreaking.
That said, I do think that the personal perspective takes on more weight when there are facts and broader trends to draw on. I just am not sure if this book included them in a particularly literary way.
All in all, though, this book will definitely stick with me for a long time, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Sometimes, though, it felt like the book was just dumping information on me instead of telling a story. The moments that prioritize interpersonal relationships or more personal reflections on the land are the strongest for me. Lace and Jimmy Make's relationship is just heartbreaking.
That said, I do think that the personal perspective takes on more weight when there are facts and broader trends to draw on. I just am not sure if this book included them in a particularly literary way.
All in all, though, this book will definitely stick with me for a long time, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.
April 21, 2022
There isn’t a Steinbeck novels I’ve read that I haven’t despised, so I suppose it’s no surprise that I wasn’t blown away by “Appalachia’s Steinbeck.”
I wanted to like this book, but it was so boring. Also a bit confusing with the multiple narrators jumping around so much. Plus who doesn’t like dialogue, these characters did little but just tell, rarely seemed to interact meaningfully with one another.
I wanted to like this book, but it was so boring. Also a bit confusing with the multiple narrators jumping around so much. Plus who doesn’t like dialogue, these characters did little but just tell, rarely seemed to interact meaningfully with one another.
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July 29, 2019Incredibly good. Difficult, at first, like a Faulkner book, but you get the sense of most of the characters by about halfway in. Pancake writes well in the epic psychological scale of people directly confronting just what mountaintop removal means.
March 18, 2024
Very well written! such a sad sad story that this book follows of mountaintop removal. the ending left me feeling heavy and sad…
November 8, 2019
3.8 actually. First the coal companies destroyed their land; then it destroyed their souls!
July 4, 2024
Ugh so good and devastating
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