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blakeley_elliott's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
wordnerdy's review against another edition
3.0
http://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2016/05/2016-book-85.html
Haigh's latest--after News From Heaven--is also set her in fictional Western Pennsylvania coal mining town, Bakerton--but now the town is overrun by fracking. This one didn't work as well as its predecessor, for me--it's a novel, but parts read like short stories, and there is just a little too much going on. I felt like the characters were all given short shrift--there just wasn't enough to them, even with the occasional random flashback chapter. I mean, I would have read a whole book JUST about possible-trans farmer Mack and their partner. And one late reveal is pretty obvious to anyone who's ever seen The Sixth Sense (or read the internet). It's a really great and interesting look at the fracking industry, though (environmentalists don't come off too well, either), not to mention small towns, families, etc. And Haigh's descriptions, particularly of the Pennsylvania landscape and general atmosphere, really struck home for me. She's a very evocative writer. This one just didn't quite land for me. B/B+.
Haigh's latest--after News From Heaven--is also set her in fictional Western Pennsylvania coal mining town, Bakerton--but now the town is overrun by fracking. This one didn't work as well as its predecessor, for me--it's a novel, but parts read like short stories, and there is just a little too much going on. I felt like the characters were all given short shrift--there just wasn't enough to them, even with the occasional random flashback chapter. I mean, I would have read a whole book JUST about possible-trans farmer Mack and their partner. And one late reveal is pretty obvious to anyone who's ever seen The Sixth Sense (or read the internet). It's a really great and interesting look at the fracking industry, though (environmentalists don't come off too well, either), not to mention small towns, families, etc. And Haigh's descriptions, particularly of the Pennsylvania landscape and general atmosphere, really struck home for me. She's a very evocative writer. This one just didn't quite land for me. B/B+.
jeanneblasberg's review against another edition
4.0
Loved the book. So many important issues and complicated characters twisted together. Subtle and nuanced, just like life! No easy answers!!
ladyzbyrd's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
ida_ree's review against another edition
4.0
Three and a half stars, but Goodreads still doesn't let you do that.
A fictional, but well-researched story about what happens when fracking comes to small town Pennsylvania. Which neighbors sign drilling leases, which refuse and how it affects all of them.
Parts of this book were breathtaking -- a nostalgic description of the beloved woods where children play, followed starkly by an ascetic description of the equipment that will be used to clear the area for drilling. Scenes like that had maximum impact.
In other parts, I found some writing tics a little wearing after a while. The writing is a little uneven. The cast of point of view characters is large, which I'm okay with. But not all of them had good character development. Still, the ones where the author went deep were able to carry the story. You couldn't help feeling sympathy for the area residents on all sides of the issue.
The book prompted me to learn more about fracking, which is something important fiction can do. Worth the read.
A fictional, but well-researched story about what happens when fracking comes to small town Pennsylvania. Which neighbors sign drilling leases, which refuse and how it affects all of them.
Parts of this book were breathtaking -- a nostalgic description of the beloved woods where children play, followed starkly by an ascetic description of the equipment that will be used to clear the area for drilling. Scenes like that had maximum impact.
In other parts, I found some writing tics a little wearing after a while. The writing is a little uneven. The cast of point of view characters is large, which I'm okay with. But not all of them had good character development. Still, the ones where the author went deep were able to carry the story. You couldn't help feeling sympathy for the area residents on all sides of the issue.
The book prompted me to learn more about fracking, which is something important fiction can do. Worth the read.
amyschlott's review against another edition
3.0
This is probably a 3.5 star book. I was engaged by the storylines throughout and thought it was clever to switch through time to develop the characters more fully. However, if I took breaks from this, I sometimes had trouble keeping track of who is who and what is what.
ellenrhudy's review against another edition
4.0
Jennifer Haigh does a pretty amazing job here, displaying the horrors (big and small) of fracking without preaching. Most of the story takes place in a small town in PA, following a group of characters including oil riggers, scientists, farmers, a meth addict, a preacher, a family that's signed an oil lease. Bakerton, forgotten after its coal runs out, comes back on the map when natural gas companies begin signing leases to drill the Marcellus Shale running under the town. Haigh lets us see this from every angle, from the CEO driving this move to the farmers refusing to sign a lease and being used, in another way, by a scientist who wants only to communicate the horrors of fracking (even where that means bending the truth). The novel doesn't end so much as it moves away from these characters; the story is going to continue elsewhere, wherever cheaper drilling happens next. What makes this novel work is that every character is flawed, acting on sometimes questionable motives or a skewed vision of the world; Haigh doesn't try to falsely wrap up any of their stories, and you have the sense that they're still out there somewhere.
eileen9311's review against another edition
4.0
Dark, dreary, harsh, sometimes coarse – these adjectives apply here. I almost bailed out at one point, but it’s painful to turn down a book by this author! She paints such vivid pictures of the flawed individuals who drive the plot, and what a sense of place! The following description of woods soon to be leveled by the encroaching wheels of progress is so very affecting!
“The forest is a century old, mixed hardwoods, trunks thick as rain barrels – the childhood gymnasium of four generations, prime real estate for tree houses and tire swings. The forest ringing with war whoops, high-pitched laughter, Ollie, Ollie Oxen Free. There have been epic games of Red Rover, Red Rover; hide-and-seek invitationals that lasted for hours. It is a province of children, a place where adults do not venture – the coffee drinkers and newspaper readers, the tax payers and insurance buyers, the wearers of lipstick and ties. A kingdom governed by ancient laws, passed down through the ages, Dibs and Three Strikes and Tag, You’re It…’
Slowly, the reader becomes immersed in that dreary world where there is despair, together with dawning hope and unrealistic dreams. Jennifer Haigh does have an ax to grind, though, – about the environment and the evil, self- serving energy companies – which I found somewhat tolerable and vaguely annoying. There seemed to be an undue amount of technical detail as well, about fracking, the rigs, and drilling and so forth. Maybe this was necessary to bring the story forward. Heat and Light was certainly well researched and I’m not a detail person, so perhaps this criticism is unwarranted. Regardless, I’ll be first in line should she write another book! Startling, intrusive, arresting, and pervasive is this story, as indeed are the ‘heat and light’ elements of the title. The bleakness of the characters’ lives is poignantly, heartbreakingly rendered, such that it was a relief to put the book aside at times and take a deep breath! Yet I was irresistibly drawn back. Suspense was not a player, though. To my surprise, I just found myself caring amazingly about these troubled characters and their struggles. Maybe 4 stars, or three and a half….
“The forest is a century old, mixed hardwoods, trunks thick as rain barrels – the childhood gymnasium of four generations, prime real estate for tree houses and tire swings. The forest ringing with war whoops, high-pitched laughter, Ollie, Ollie Oxen Free. There have been epic games of Red Rover, Red Rover; hide-and-seek invitationals that lasted for hours. It is a province of children, a place where adults do not venture – the coffee drinkers and newspaper readers, the tax payers and insurance buyers, the wearers of lipstick and ties. A kingdom governed by ancient laws, passed down through the ages, Dibs and Three Strikes and Tag, You’re It…’
Slowly, the reader becomes immersed in that dreary world where there is despair, together with dawning hope and unrealistic dreams. Jennifer Haigh does have an ax to grind, though, – about the environment and the evil, self- serving energy companies – which I found somewhat tolerable and vaguely annoying. There seemed to be an undue amount of technical detail as well, about fracking, the rigs, and drilling and so forth. Maybe this was necessary to bring the story forward. Heat and Light was certainly well researched and I’m not a detail person, so perhaps this criticism is unwarranted. Regardless, I’ll be first in line should she write another book! Startling, intrusive, arresting, and pervasive is this story, as indeed are the ‘heat and light’ elements of the title. The bleakness of the characters’ lives is poignantly, heartbreakingly rendered, such that it was a relief to put the book aside at times and take a deep breath! Yet I was irresistibly drawn back. Suspense was not a player, though. To my surprise, I just found myself caring amazingly about these troubled characters and their struggles. Maybe 4 stars, or three and a half….
richardwells's review against another edition
4.0
Pennsylvania has always been ripe for exploitation - the land under PA, anyway - and over the years it has indeed been exploited. The first oil well was sunk in 1858 in Titusville. The importance of that well was more in technological advances than oil production, and opened the way to large scale drilling in the region, and anyplace else the geologists of the day thought oil might flow. It’s been the same story from those Col Drake days. Spot the source, buy the land, drill, pump, count the money. Oil wasn’t called black gold for nothing. What oil wasn’t ruining coal destroyed. PA had its day in the nuclear spotlight as well. Three Mile Island was a catastrophe and a boffo-socko starring Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas, and Jack Lemmon. It was America’s challenge to Chernobyl, at least for a time.
Lately, the mad scientists of petroleum have come up with a new way of bringing the stuff to surface. (Hang on for a lesson.) Water, (7-15 million liters per well) laced with quartz sand and chemicals (proprietary,) and under high pressure is forced into shale to create or increase fractures, and release oil. The oil, the crudest in the business, is pumped up and shipped out. The most efficient way of moving the oil is through pipelines, but that’s another story. Most of the poisoned water is recovered and transported or stored thereby spreading pollution. About 30% stays in the ground, and filters into groundwater systems – although most fracking companies won’t admit that happens. One of the big by-products of fracking is methane gas, which is released into the atmosphere, or into existing water supplies. Those videos of fire water flowing from faucets are all about methane – worst greenhouse gas of them all, bad for infants and all living things. There’s nothing good about fracking.
The other wonder of the oil wizards is horizontal drilling. You only go down so far, then you go sideways.
Step one is leasing the mineral rights under the land. Here’s where our story begins. In order for the fracking companies to get a decent (excuse the contradiction in terms) return on investment, contiguous parcels have to be leased. The front men go in and try to buy up as much adjacent property as possible. Western PA, home of the Marcellus shale formation, is economically hard pressed. People sell the rights for the first asking price. Other people hold out and eventually get a higher price. Thus antagonism builds. Other people decide not to sell at all, and that results in antagonism and pressure – dead pets, flaming bags of feces, slashed tires, what-have-you.
For whatever good or greedy reasons people sell their mineral rights, what happens next makes everybody crazy. Heavy machinery, new roads, huge concrete pads, the cacophony of drilling – loudlouderloudest – funny tasting drinking water, local meth producers stealing chemicals, sick children, sick livestock; a mechanized garden of earthly delights populated by hungry ghosts.
In Heat & Light, you get all this and more.
I kept thinking of Tolstoy while I read this character driven history of the energy industry in Pennsylvania. People drive the plot, and are behind events, and the path of people and events is presented as a history of contingencies. From Colonel Drake and Uncle Billie, the parents of oil drilling in PA, to the workers at Three Mile Island that site of nuclear catastrophe, to the heads of oil companies getting richer and going broke on fracking, and their multitude of henchmen, salesmen, and wild-catters,and to the citizens of an economically depressed farming community that sell their land - not to get rich, but to get by. It’s birthright v. pottage.
This compelling novel piles detail upon detail to give us full characters, and full situations that feel so real that by book’s end I felt I knew the good, bad, and ugly, understood their lives, and felt their pain.
Heat & Light takes place in what was my backyard, and though the location is fictional, if you saw a drilling map of southwestern PA, just south of Pittsburgh, you’d see close to 2,000 wells that are like tombstones in a regional cemetery. What coal and oil started fracking finished. Just wait for the earthquakes.
Lately, the mad scientists of petroleum have come up with a new way of bringing the stuff to surface. (Hang on for a lesson.) Water, (7-15 million liters per well) laced with quartz sand and chemicals (proprietary,) and under high pressure is forced into shale to create or increase fractures, and release oil. The oil, the crudest in the business, is pumped up and shipped out. The most efficient way of moving the oil is through pipelines, but that’s another story. Most of the poisoned water is recovered and transported or stored thereby spreading pollution. About 30% stays in the ground, and filters into groundwater systems – although most fracking companies won’t admit that happens. One of the big by-products of fracking is methane gas, which is released into the atmosphere, or into existing water supplies. Those videos of fire water flowing from faucets are all about methane – worst greenhouse gas of them all, bad for infants and all living things. There’s nothing good about fracking.
The other wonder of the oil wizards is horizontal drilling. You only go down so far, then you go sideways.
Step one is leasing the mineral rights under the land. Here’s where our story begins. In order for the fracking companies to get a decent (excuse the contradiction in terms) return on investment, contiguous parcels have to be leased. The front men go in and try to buy up as much adjacent property as possible. Western PA, home of the Marcellus shale formation, is economically hard pressed. People sell the rights for the first asking price. Other people hold out and eventually get a higher price. Thus antagonism builds. Other people decide not to sell at all, and that results in antagonism and pressure – dead pets, flaming bags of feces, slashed tires, what-have-you.
For whatever good or greedy reasons people sell their mineral rights, what happens next makes everybody crazy. Heavy machinery, new roads, huge concrete pads, the cacophony of drilling – loudlouderloudest – funny tasting drinking water, local meth producers stealing chemicals, sick children, sick livestock; a mechanized garden of earthly delights populated by hungry ghosts.
In Heat & Light, you get all this and more.
I kept thinking of Tolstoy while I read this character driven history of the energy industry in Pennsylvania. People drive the plot, and are behind events, and the path of people and events is presented as a history of contingencies. From Colonel Drake and Uncle Billie, the parents of oil drilling in PA, to the workers at Three Mile Island that site of nuclear catastrophe, to the heads of oil companies getting richer and going broke on fracking, and their multitude of henchmen, salesmen, and wild-catters,and to the citizens of an economically depressed farming community that sell their land - not to get rich, but to get by. It’s birthright v. pottage.
This compelling novel piles detail upon detail to give us full characters, and full situations that feel so real that by book’s end I felt I knew the good, bad, and ugly, understood their lives, and felt their pain.
Heat & Light takes place in what was my backyard, and though the location is fictional, if you saw a drilling map of southwestern PA, just south of Pittsburgh, you’d see close to 2,000 wells that are like tombstones in a regional cemetery. What coal and oil started fracking finished. Just wait for the earthquakes.
jar7709's review against another edition
4.0
Wow. I wish we could give half stars because for me this was *almost* a perfect book. If you like tidy plots and and clear-cut good guys and neatly wrapped conclusions, this might not be your first choice, because it is a little messy and complicated. Just as in life and all questions of business vs. environment and how that plays out in small towns and the larger public sphere, this novel's fully-realized characters don't know exactly what's happening (no one in the story does). No matter which "side" they are on, and even though the characters are not wart free, I found most of them still sympathetic. This novel could be marketed as a "ripped from the headlines" tale about fracking in small town Pennsylvania, but I'm glad the advertising I've seen hasn't been so trite as that, because that would be an injustice to this extremely well written and nuanced story that is also about much more than just that.