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3.9 AVERAGE
3.9 AVERAGE
Well I'm definitely going to be reading some more James Lee Burke. How can an avid reader miss out on such a prolific author? Idk. It's been a couple of days since I finished and I think I might have been a little exuberant with 5 stars, but it's definitely close so I'm leaving it.
Wayfaring Stranger reminds me a little of The Son by Philip Meyer. It's not a western, but it has characters which you might associate with that era. "Marlborough Men". It's really hard to recap because it's all over the board. Starts out with an encounter with Bonnie and Clyde, moves on to World War 2 and the fox hole, and finds it's home (majority of the book) with big oil business. But throw in some drama, a brother-like relationship, some anti-Semitic themes and it has the making of a good novel. I kept thinking Faulkner Of Mice and Men (which I didn't like) and East of Eden (one of my fav books of all time.) It kept me turning pages, which is a high endorsement for me lately.
After I finished, I saw that it was the first in a series. I'm not much for series, but I'd give it a go.
Wayfaring Stranger reminds me a little of The Son by Philip Meyer. It's not a western, but it has characters which you might associate with that era. "Marlborough Men". It's really hard to recap because it's all over the board. Starts out with an encounter with Bonnie and Clyde, moves on to World War 2 and the fox hole, and finds it's home (majority of the book) with big oil business. But throw in some drama, a brother-like relationship, some anti-Semitic themes and it has the making of a good novel. I kept thinking Faulkner Of Mice and Men (which I didn't like) and East of Eden (one of my fav books of all time.) It kept me turning pages, which is a high endorsement for me lately.
After I finished, I saw that it was the first in a series. I'm not much for series, but I'd give it a go.
I enjoyed this one also. It is about a man and his wife that me during WWII, married, and is now living in Texas. They along with a buddy from the military start a company from a new patent for a machine that welds pipeline for the oil fields. They are making money and someone is out to get them and nothing stands in their way.
adventurous
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
4.5* The unique writing style of James Lee Burke blew me away. He is such a distinctive writer with an art for storytelling. It is a strange comment but it was almost as if his writing outshone the story. That being said the story it's self was impressively thought out and cleverly unfolded. I really enjoyed this book.
Burke breaks new ground in this book, going back to the foundation of the family of Hackberry Holland, one of the characters in his series. Covering Bonnie and Clyde; the Second World War; the fledgling oil business in Texas and Louisiana, with a few visits to Hollywood thrown in, this is not your typical James Lee Burke novel. But, as always, he remains true to his exploration of truth, greed, violence and evil. This is a richly imagined, sweeping tale that will take readers back to a time in America’s history that still retained some of its innocence. The story invites readers to follow along with Weldon Avery Holland as he struggles to hang on to his values and his beliefs through war and corruption when faced with the depths of evil that men will go to.
Something bothered me about this book and it took me a while to figure out.
Burke writes excellent bad guys but in this case, you never get more than a
glimpse of them. They are ephemeral. Reaching out from the fog to touch and
twist and destroy lives. But this is a book about how one reacts to evil, and
as ever, Burke is a writer without compare.
Burke writes excellent bad guys but in this case, you never get more than a
glimpse of them. They are ephemeral. Reaching out from the fog to touch and
twist and destroy lives. But this is a book about how one reacts to evil, and
as ever, Burke is a writer without compare.
This is sort of fudging because I just listened to the audio book of Wayfaring Stranger on a recent road trip. It is SO GOOD that I intend on buying a hardcopy so I can relive the experience of what I consider to be James Lee Burke's best novel to date. As I considered Ray Bradbury to be the poet/lyricist of SciFi/Fantasy novels, so do I consider JLB as the poet/lyricist of detective novels and now, with Wayfaring Stranger, of mainstream novels, dare I say this one counts as a wonderful and moving piece of literature. I do so dare. I can't recommend it highly enough!
This is the first of Burke's books that I've read. I thought it was just so so. I found it kind of lacking at times...other times good, but not a real page turner. I almost put it down a few times without finishing however I managed to get through it. I like mystery and suspense novels which I thought Burke wrote, but apparently I picked a book where he was trying something different. I kind of feel he was trying to write a classic like Ayn Rand's Fountainhead - it never got there or even close. He had some kind of idea but just wasn't conveying it to the reader. As others have said he kind of lost it with the ending and it seems like he ended the book without pulling it all together. So, without getting into specifics, that is my take on this read...let me know if anyone feels the same.
Wow. I don't know why I started reading this. I'd never heard of the author and I'm not sure how the book even came on my radar. But it totally blew me away. It's beautifully written, tightly constructed, and filled with memorable and nuanced characters. There are Gatsby parallels that may or may not have been intentional, I haven't decided yet. I was deeply immersed in the setting and story.
I actually listened to the audiobook of this (which is great), but I think I might get a paper copy at some point so I can have it around to flip through.
I actually listened to the audiobook of this (which is great), but I think I might get a paper copy at some point so I can have it around to flip through.
Burke has done a few historical novels before, but none quite, I think, as full-blooded as this. Taking in the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde, the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of the death camps, the Texas oil boom, the rise of Hollywood and a few walk-on gangsters, this epic of love and honour and integrity struggling to survive in a tarnished, corrupt and violent world, as the spirit, if not the creed, that drove the Nazi tiger tanks through the Ardennes forest arises again and starts to devour the soul of the United States from the inside out. Weldon Holland and Hershel Pine rescue Rosita Lowenstein from a Nazi extermination camp, but can they build a business based on the technology of their enemies and thrive in a moral swamp that tries to suck them down and make them as bad as everyone else.
All the usual Burke themes of spiritual good and evil, and trying to make sense of a fallen world with beautifully atmospheric purple prose, wounded men, strong women and deplorable billionaires.
All the usual Burke themes of spiritual good and evil, and trying to make sense of a fallen world with beautifully atmospheric purple prose, wounded men, strong women and deplorable billionaires.