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joejoh's review
4.0
This book has some wonderful prose. I really enjoyed it, despite flaws that other reviewers have mentioned. I can recommend it based on the language alone. Warning! This book contains graphic content and language, and is definitely NOT for children.
apairofducks's review
I don’t consider myself particularly squeamish when it comes to books having “problematic” elements, but this book really pushed me to my limits. The narrative style was beautiful and compelling, but I couldn’t handle the way every scene with Dellwood Barker made my skin crawl.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Sexual assault, Pedophilia, Sexual content, and Incest
misscalije's review
5.0
This is not your grandpa’s western.
Spanbauer’s narrative practice of phrase repetition (?) is always a hoot to read. So much meaning packed into recurring ideas. The twists and turns...being an Idahoan I loved this.
Spanbauer’s narrative practice of phrase repetition (?) is always a hoot to read. So much meaning packed into recurring ideas. The twists and turns...being an Idahoan I loved this.
archaicrobin's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I started this book in 2016 and looked all over for it. I finally found it at an old used bookstore for $8 and was so excited I started it immediately since I’d loved the other book I’d read by this author. I started this book in 2016 and it was so tragic and hard for me to get through that I put it back on my shelf and it sat there until February 2023 when I picked it for the Unread Shelf prompt “courage” because I knew it would take a lot of courage to finally finish The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon, and I was not wrong.
I loved this book but it also was absolutely horrific, devastating, and heartbreaking. Spanbauer is a very talented writer with beautiful prose, lively characters, and visceral storytelling. He is not afraid to literally tear your heart out with his stories that are so mired in the tragic truths of our nation. In this historical literary novel about life, love, belonging, sex, and family set in the Wild West in the small town of Excellent Idaho, Spanbauer tells a tragic tale from the perspective of a half white, half Native American boy named Out in the Shed as he grows up working in a brothel after his mother is murdered. Shed shares his story but also the stories of all the other people in his small town, the good and bad alike all play part in Shed’s story of love, loss, family, survival, and self discovery. They were a good family.
While I absolutely love this book I do not recommend it to anyone that may have issues with many triggers you can expect to find in a historical novel set in the U.S. during the chaotic and dangerous cowboy era of the 1800s. Warnings include: rape, sex, misogyny, grief, death, violence, gore, amputation, incest, polyamory, racism, hate crime, torture, sexual assault, racial slurs, bigotry, lynching, atrocities of the past, and this was also written in the nineties so there tons of racial stereotypes which again were common during this Wild West era.
If you can handle these and stomach them, there is such a powerful story here but again I don’t recommend this to the faint of heart! This book had me sobbing and it wasn’t even over, I still had almost a 100 pages left and it was a struggle all the at until the end but I loved it.
I loved this book but it also was absolutely horrific, devastating, and heartbreaking. Spanbauer is a very talented writer with beautiful prose, lively characters, and visceral storytelling. He is not afraid to literally tear your heart out with his stories that are so mired in the tragic truths of our nation. In this historical literary novel about life, love, belonging, sex, and family set in the Wild West in the small town of Excellent Idaho, Spanbauer tells a tragic tale from the perspective of a half white, half Native American boy named Out in the Shed as he grows up working in a brothel after his mother is murdered. Shed shares his story but also the stories of all the other people in his small town, the good and bad alike all play part in Shed’s story of love, loss, family, survival, and self discovery. They were a good family.
While I absolutely love this book I do not recommend it to anyone that may have issues with many triggers you can expect to find in a historical novel set in the U.S. during the chaotic and dangerous cowboy era of the 1800s. Warnings include: rape, sex, misogyny, grief, death, violence, gore, amputation, incest, polyamory, racism, hate crime, torture, sexual assault, racial slurs, bigotry, lynching, atrocities of the past, and this was also written in the nineties so there tons of racial stereotypes which again were common during this Wild West era.
If you can handle these and stomach them, there is such a powerful story here but again I don’t recommend this to the faint of heart! This book had me sobbing and it wasn’t even over, I still had almost a 100 pages left and it was a struggle all the at until the end but I loved it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gaslighting, Genocide, Gore, Incest, Infidelity, Medical content, Medical trauma, Misogyny, Murder, Grief, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Sexism, Adult/minor relationship, Racial slurs, Racism, Religious bigotry, Sexual violence, Torture, Abandonment, Cursing, Gun violence, Hate crime, Rape, Self harm, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Alcohol, Animal death, Biphobia, Child abuse, Classism, Drug use, Fire/Fire injury, Pedophilia, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Blood, Body horror, Colonisation, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, and Violence
rickinto's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
silodear's review
4.0
I really, really enjoyed this book. My faith in the DESC book club is revived. I'm excited to talk about this novel with my coworkers.
I do, however, agree with rocket's comment (and review). The race stuff was pretty off-putting. The story though? Beautiful. Deeply beautiful and well done.
I do, however, agree with rocket's comment (and review). The race stuff was pretty off-putting. The story though? Beautiful. Deeply beautiful and well done.
afloraldad's review
4.0
I liked "Now is The Hour" much better and found it more engaging - but Spanbauer's storytelling is A++
notliable's review
3.0
Shed, short for Out-In-The-Shed, leaves his hometown of Excellent, Idaho in order to find out the meaning of his true name and what his identity is. In The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, Tom Spanbauer tries to create a bastardized bildungsroman where a character keeps growing and finding out more about themselves even after they return from leaving their hometown. The book is based off of Shed's quest for identity that is never truly over or completely understood.
Throughout the journey, Shed lives and interacts with characters like Ida Richilieau, who owns her own brothel and loves talking about dicks, and Dellwood Barker, who believes in the power of semen retention. The reader is never quite sure who Shed is going to meet and how Shed is going to react with them. He is a lovable and unpredictable character who's storyline will lead the reader into utter disbelief.
Spanbauer does a good job at being sexually inclusive with sexual experiences of all forms. As a gay man himself, he normalizes varying sexualities to a point where they are an add-on to the main plot instead of a major plot feature.
The same cannot be said in his use of varying ethnicities. When the Wisdom Brothers come into town, they are characterized with stereotypical vernacular, subpar intelligence, and large dicks. The Wisdom Brothers run a minstrel show where they, as black men put, on black face and sing spirituals. One scene depicts the Wisdom Brothers putting black paint all over Shed's body in a night of drunken debauchery. With the introduction of the Wisdom Brothers, the town of Excellent, Idaho does get a reason to have a war between the religious Mormons and the illicit brothel Ida owns. Because of this war between "good" and "evil," these brothers do have a reason to be in the plot. However, the inclusion of black face and their depiction in the plot seems only to be written because its over-the-top and unexpected. With a book that has been unexpected and radical at every turn, the inclusion of racialized images, within a book not about this ethnic identity, seems crass. It's inclusion seems like Spanbauer wanted something controversial to end his book with instead of trying to accurately depict a group of people. After reading scenes with the Wisdom Brothers in them, the reader wonders was this racialized imagery even necessary.
The book, in general, is an entertaining read because of the absurdity of the plot and the unexpectedness of the ending. It is inclusive to those that are LGBTQA, but not of those of varying ethnicities. I recommend this book to those that like plot-twists and want an ending they would never have guessed. I do not recommend this book to those that want to read a book that accurately and authentically represents people of varying ethnicities.
Throughout the journey, Shed lives and interacts with characters like Ida Richilieau, who owns her own brothel and loves talking about dicks, and Dellwood Barker, who believes in the power of semen retention. The reader is never quite sure who Shed is going to meet and how Shed is going to react with them. He is a lovable and unpredictable character who's storyline will lead the reader into utter disbelief.
Spanbauer does a good job at being sexually inclusive with sexual experiences of all forms. As a gay man himself, he normalizes varying sexualities to a point where they are an add-on to the main plot instead of a major plot feature.
The same cannot be said in his use of varying ethnicities. When the Wisdom Brothers come into town, they are characterized with stereotypical vernacular, subpar intelligence, and large dicks. The Wisdom Brothers run a minstrel show where they, as black men put, on black face and sing spirituals. One scene depicts the Wisdom Brothers putting black paint all over Shed's body in a night of drunken debauchery. With the introduction of the Wisdom Brothers, the town of Excellent, Idaho does get a reason to have a war between the religious Mormons and the illicit brothel Ida owns. Because of this war between "good" and "evil," these brothers do have a reason to be in the plot. However, the inclusion of black face and their depiction in the plot seems only to be written because its over-the-top and unexpected. With a book that has been unexpected and radical at every turn, the inclusion of racialized images, within a book not about this ethnic identity, seems crass. It's inclusion seems like Spanbauer wanted something controversial to end his book with instead of trying to accurately depict a group of people. After reading scenes with the Wisdom Brothers in them, the reader wonders was this racialized imagery even necessary.
The book, in general, is an entertaining read because of the absurdity of the plot and the unexpectedness of the ending. It is inclusive to those that are LGBTQA, but not of those of varying ethnicities. I recommend this book to those that like plot-twists and want an ending they would never have guessed. I do not recommend this book to those that want to read a book that accurately and authentically represents people of varying ethnicities.
jackieeh's review
4.0
Oh God. There are so many things wrong with this book, most of which come down to the author's ability to get the reader to sit through incredibly nasty and graphic descriptions of pretty much everything you can think of. Spanbauer downplays rape and incest in ways I think are really icky, and wades into puddles of problematic descriptions of racial minorities here and there, both of which were troublesome, but nothing even approches the grossness of the amputation scene. It made me think of my first time watching Ben Hur when I was too young to realize that the camera was going to cut away at the last moment. Spanbauer's camera doesn't cut away.
The thing is, though, it's not clear how much of that is Spanbauer and how much of that is his characters who, problematic descriptions aside, are fantastic. Spanbauer's cast of incredibly eccentric (some are nicely kooky, some are batshit insane) characters live at a time when the Wild West is losing steam, in a part of Idaho being taken over by Mormons. They form the mother of dysfunctional families and get along as best they can telling stories, getting drunk, and having sex with each other. The stories are great, the characters are hilarious, and Spanbauer guides you through it all showing you the charm and the grit of their lives in equal measure.
This novel bridges the gap between the settings of Lonesome Dove and Louise Erdrich's work. Spanbauer is as unforgiving as both McMurtry and Erdrich can be, but he also has the same affection for his characters. Plus there is a lot of Erdrich-ian magical realism going on, which is never a bad thing.
SOMETHING in this book was really well done. I'm having a hard time quite putting my finger on it. Nonetheless, it gets four stars despite having bothered me so much, so that must mean something.
The thing is, though, it's not clear how much of that is Spanbauer and how much of that is his characters who, problematic descriptions aside, are fantastic. Spanbauer's cast of incredibly eccentric (some are nicely kooky, some are batshit insane) characters live at a time when the Wild West is losing steam, in a part of Idaho being taken over by Mormons. They form the mother of dysfunctional families and get along as best they can telling stories, getting drunk, and having sex with each other. The stories are great, the characters are hilarious, and Spanbauer guides you through it all showing you the charm and the grit of their lives in equal measure.
This novel bridges the gap between the settings of Lonesome Dove and Louise Erdrich's work. Spanbauer is as unforgiving as both McMurtry and Erdrich can be, but he also has the same affection for his characters. Plus there is a lot of Erdrich-ian magical realism going on, which is never a bad thing.
SOMETHING in this book was really well done. I'm having a hard time quite putting my finger on it. Nonetheless, it gets four stars despite having bothered me so much, so that must mean something.