Reviews

Mink River by Brian Doyle

alijc's review

4.0

I truly loved this book. My only regret is that it took me this long to get around to reading it. It's got a plot, more or less, but is more a poem than a novel. Or a fairy tale, about a magical place were crows converse and bears read the New York Times, wrapped around countless other tales. Salish, Irish, human and non-human, all mixed and mingled together.

carolined314's review

5.0

This book was handed to me while on a river rafting trip. I read the first ten pages and didn't notice the campfire had been started. Then I yanked myself out of it and had a wonderful evening. The next morning, the phrases and notions kept tumbling about my head. So, I kept reading in snippets and sneaked moments between hikes, swimming and floating. When I got about thirty pages in, I realized the writing was so gorgeous I needed to enjoy it more. So I started over.

I'd never started a book over, just to have the pleasure of reading it again, without finishing it.

Mink River is a glorious community, a place you want to live, and described in such loving and careful terms that all other language seems a pale shadow. Highly recommended.

rcraswell's review

5.0

I was given this book as a gift and it sat in my beside reading queue for far longer than it should have. A number of reviewers have commented that Doyle breaks quite a few rules with this book and this may be true but, for this book, for this town, for these characters, for this story, it just works. I found myself immediately drawn in by the language and stayed engaged to the very end.

willal's review against another edition

emotional hopeful slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

lizloulie's review

4.0

What a delightful town and people, I hope to “find” the town on my next trip to the Coast.

zeroraven's review

5.0

Quite possibly my favorite book ever, in quiet contention with The Dispossessed.

enidsorko's review

5.0

This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. The way the story was told was quite unique, and I found the book very difficult to put down.

shimmer's review

4.0

The overwhelming and engrossing sense of place and atmosphere carried the day here. The characters often felt a bit too "tidy," or too clearly defined by their narrative roles to be more than types. Some threads of the story seemed overdeveloped, while others were underdeveloped—great ideas dropped in once or twice then left unexamined. But I could have read the descriptions of the coastal landscape and happily followed the characters around in it forever, particularly because of the refreshing, surprising optimism of the novel's style. Perhaps we've been conditioned as readers to only expects stories of collapsing rural towns to be bleak and violent and dark, but while Mink River has as much violence and darkness as any "country noir" story, and while that darkness is inherent in the very historical origins of the place, the novel's emphasis is clearly on the hopeful in a way that snuck up on me.

logophile's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

If the TV show Northern Exposure were a book, this would be it. I loved Northern Exposure, but as a novel, it’s a tad too twee for my taste. Everyone is just so good, and kind, and wise.

hannahlee's review

5.0

A completely lovely story - like Under Milk Wood meets One Hundred Years of Solitude, but with the specialness of place of the Pacific Northwest. This is a very lyrical, meandering piece, recommended for lovers of language and students of life, and for them it is totally engrossing, though I can imagine others not being into it by virtue of its sometimes slow pace. Still, I highly recommend it to any willing to give it a try!