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stevem0214's review against another edition
1.0
Not a very good book in my opinion. Short stories, which I usually love, but just not week written. Every main character seemed to be a horrible person. I guess in Mr. Vestal's opinion, Idaho really is Godforsaken...this book certainly was.
modeislodis's review against another edition
3.0
Vestal's got a distinct voice and an obvious talent. This collection of short stories impressed me. I'd recommend to those who like things a little gritty.
perednia's review against another edition
5.0
From a man who has been dead for hundreds of years, trying to capture whole days or moments that made him feel vibrantly alive, to the man who loses his only daughter to fast-talking, looking-in-his-hat Joseph Smith, the men in Shawn Vestal's Godforsaken Idaho both embody and rail against the two things that one of them says turn the world -- greed and vanity.
The stories in Godforsaken Idaho, which this fall won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction, display an array of characters in settings that range from an eternal cafeteria, which is the bleakest version of heaven around, to the living room of an angry landlord whose heart gave up on him out on the street.
That cafeteria is in the opening story, "The First Several Hundred Years Following My Death", a story that brings to mind the fantastical stories in George Saunders's brilliant Tenth of December. The narrator talks in a matter-of-fact way about how whatever you can imagine is what you experience again in this version of an afterlife. But the only things you can experience now are things that you have already experienced. Food, for example, is only food that you remember eating. You can spend as long or as little as you like reliving certain times, certain moments.
Seeking out the memories worth going over again wears thin soon. When his ex-wife arrives, he talks to her. He talks to his son, who died at a much older age and who doesn't want much to do with a dad who left when he was young. Trying to gather a nuclear family for a meal in that cafeteria leads to complications that he didn't envision. What the narrator realizes is that:
If you want peace, you have to find it in the life you left behind.
But most of Vestal's characters are not interested in peace. They are restless, they don't believe in anything much, they expect disappointment and are not surprised when any of them make sure that disappointment is what they get. And yet. And yet.
Even in the bleakest parts of the greyest stories in this collection, there are moments that are so clear-eyed "along the trail to Godforsaken Idaho", as it is put in one story, that ground the reader in the experiences of the characters. Such is the case of a new father, who realizes when his baby son runs a fever that "he had become something else entirely, a new being who would only exist as long as his son existed".
Some of the characters, or those who may be the same characters or not but who have the same name, appear in different stories. The father in the first story is a boy in the second, for example. Many of the stories are set in or around Gooding, Idaho, a town of less than 4,000 located between Boise and Twin Falls, Idaho, and Vestal's hometown.
When I lived in North Idaho, that other part of the state was considered north Utah, not southern Idaho. And that's reflected in Vestal's stories. He was raised Mormon, later leaving the faith, and the history and culture is reflected in many of his stories. But as he said in an Oregon Public Broadcasting interview, he did not set out to write stories about Mormonism. It's part of the prism through which he looks at the world because it's part of how he became who he is.
Bradshaw, that new father in "Winter Elders", left the church years ago but they won't leave him alone. Two elders appear at his door, continuing to show up as the snow piles higher. The reader doesn't need details about why or how Bradshaw left; it's in the way he views these men, especially the more dominant one:
Pope smiled patiently at Bradshaw, lips pressed hammily together. It was the smile of every man he had met in church, the bishops and first counselors and stake presidents, the benevolent mask, the put-on solemnity, the utter falseness. It was the smile of the men who brought boxes of food when Bradshaw was a teenager and his father wasn't working, the canned meat and bricks of cheese. The men who prayed for his family. Bradshaw's father would diappear, leaving him and his motehr to kneel with the men.
Those men are in leadership in any faith, and it's easy to see how they could steer a hurting boy away from their institution.
The inability to be able to rely on faith affects Rulon Warren, who has the same last name as the other wandering elder in "Winter Elders" and whose story is told by the spirit of another man who inhabits his body. "Opposition in All Things" describes how Warren wants to terrify his fellow church members after he returns from the Good War and the men who have not seen other men killed want to congratulate him. The other man inside Warren went off the deep end and was killed by his erstwhile brethern. This unsettling story is a strong example of how Vestal's men do not believe in more than a church. They struggle to believe in themselves.
It's the same for Hale, the father in "The Diviner" who loses his daughter to Smith:
We do not live in the same world, my neighbors and I. They live in a world of codes and secrets and the hope that all will be understood, and I live in the world where bafflement and mystery are but the foundation and the condition.
And later:
How shall I understand our world when it becomes absurd, O Lord?
When greed and vanity overcome, what Hale discovers is that belief is not what matters. What matters is being together. It's that, rather than a faith system, that gives any of Vestal's men the power to go on. It's what they believe in.
The stories in Godforsaken Idaho, which this fall won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction, display an array of characters in settings that range from an eternal cafeteria, which is the bleakest version of heaven around, to the living room of an angry landlord whose heart gave up on him out on the street.
That cafeteria is in the opening story, "The First Several Hundred Years Following My Death", a story that brings to mind the fantastical stories in George Saunders's brilliant Tenth of December. The narrator talks in a matter-of-fact way about how whatever you can imagine is what you experience again in this version of an afterlife. But the only things you can experience now are things that you have already experienced. Food, for example, is only food that you remember eating. You can spend as long or as little as you like reliving certain times, certain moments.
Seeking out the memories worth going over again wears thin soon. When his ex-wife arrives, he talks to her. He talks to his son, who died at a much older age and who doesn't want much to do with a dad who left when he was young. Trying to gather a nuclear family for a meal in that cafeteria leads to complications that he didn't envision. What the narrator realizes is that:
If you want peace, you have to find it in the life you left behind.
But most of Vestal's characters are not interested in peace. They are restless, they don't believe in anything much, they expect disappointment and are not surprised when any of them make sure that disappointment is what they get. And yet. And yet.
Even in the bleakest parts of the greyest stories in this collection, there are moments that are so clear-eyed "along the trail to Godforsaken Idaho", as it is put in one story, that ground the reader in the experiences of the characters. Such is the case of a new father, who realizes when his baby son runs a fever that "he had become something else entirely, a new being who would only exist as long as his son existed".
Some of the characters, or those who may be the same characters or not but who have the same name, appear in different stories. The father in the first story is a boy in the second, for example. Many of the stories are set in or around Gooding, Idaho, a town of less than 4,000 located between Boise and Twin Falls, Idaho, and Vestal's hometown.
When I lived in North Idaho, that other part of the state was considered north Utah, not southern Idaho. And that's reflected in Vestal's stories. He was raised Mormon, later leaving the faith, and the history and culture is reflected in many of his stories. But as he said in an Oregon Public Broadcasting interview, he did not set out to write stories about Mormonism. It's part of the prism through which he looks at the world because it's part of how he became who he is.
Bradshaw, that new father in "Winter Elders", left the church years ago but they won't leave him alone. Two elders appear at his door, continuing to show up as the snow piles higher. The reader doesn't need details about why or how Bradshaw left; it's in the way he views these men, especially the more dominant one:
Pope smiled patiently at Bradshaw, lips pressed hammily together. It was the smile of every man he had met in church, the bishops and first counselors and stake presidents, the benevolent mask, the put-on solemnity, the utter falseness. It was the smile of the men who brought boxes of food when Bradshaw was a teenager and his father wasn't working, the canned meat and bricks of cheese. The men who prayed for his family. Bradshaw's father would diappear, leaving him and his motehr to kneel with the men.
Those men are in leadership in any faith, and it's easy to see how they could steer a hurting boy away from their institution.
The inability to be able to rely on faith affects Rulon Warren, who has the same last name as the other wandering elder in "Winter Elders" and whose story is told by the spirit of another man who inhabits his body. "Opposition in All Things" describes how Warren wants to terrify his fellow church members after he returns from the Good War and the men who have not seen other men killed want to congratulate him. The other man inside Warren went off the deep end and was killed by his erstwhile brethern. This unsettling story is a strong example of how Vestal's men do not believe in more than a church. They struggle to believe in themselves.
It's the same for Hale, the father in "The Diviner" who loses his daughter to Smith:
We do not live in the same world, my neighbors and I. They live in a world of codes and secrets and the hope that all will be understood, and I live in the world where bafflement and mystery are but the foundation and the condition.
And later:
How shall I understand our world when it becomes absurd, O Lord?
When greed and vanity overcome, what Hale discovers is that belief is not what matters. What matters is being together. It's that, rather than a faith system, that gives any of Vestal's men the power to go on. It's what they believe in.
jennyshank's review against another edition
4.0
Is This Heaven? No, It's Idaho.
http://www.hcn.org/issues/45.17/is-this-heaven-no-its-idaho
REVIEW - From the October 14, 2013 High Country News issue
Shawn Vestal sets the stories in his focused yet far-reaching debut collection among regular Mormon folks who live in Idaho, touching on their lives in the past, the present and even the afterworld. Most of his characters have fallen away from their faith or are struggling with doubts, and Vestal, a columnist for Spokane's Spokesman-Review, skillfully mixes those serious subjects with dry humor.
In one story, the narrator meets his ex-wife in the afterlife. "Are the kids all right?" he asks her. "You got used to not knowing that," she replies. "Come on," the narrator says, "I've been dead." In another story, a man travels with his girlfriend to Rupert, Idaho, to visit her Mormon parents. There, they find "a hand-painted sign, done up with curlicues: FAMILIES ARE FOREVER! Which sounded like a threat."
Although Vestal can also craft compelling stories in the vein of straightforward realism -- "About as Fast as This Car Will Go," for example, follows a young man's descent into criminality under the guidance of his ex-con father -- his stories soar when he frees them from the normal cosmic rules.
In "The First Several Hundred Years Following My Death," there's not much for the deceased to do but relive their own lives. "Now that it's gone, your life is the only thing you have left. Ransack it, top to bottom. Find whatever you can in there, because it's all there is." This story starts out comical but becomes increasingly moving and melancholy as the narrator tries to reconnect with people from his past.
The harrowing "Opposition in All Things" proposes a different possibility for the afterlife. A crusty 1880s Idaho pioneer wakes from his death to find his spirit possessing Rulon Warren, a World War I veteran having difficulty meeting the expectations of his small Mormon town. Rulon's bored possessor urges him to more or less re-enact the pioneer's own life, ultimately behaving like a lunatic, with violent repercussions.
In whatever century these stories are set, they are united in their emphasis on family, and in their exploration of what we owe to and can expect from the people who share our blood, in this life and beyond.
http://www.hcn.org/issues/45.17/is-this-heaven-no-its-idaho
REVIEW - From the October 14, 2013 High Country News issue
Shawn Vestal sets the stories in his focused yet far-reaching debut collection among regular Mormon folks who live in Idaho, touching on their lives in the past, the present and even the afterworld. Most of his characters have fallen away from their faith or are struggling with doubts, and Vestal, a columnist for Spokane's Spokesman-Review, skillfully mixes those serious subjects with dry humor.
In one story, the narrator meets his ex-wife in the afterlife. "Are the kids all right?" he asks her. "You got used to not knowing that," she replies. "Come on," the narrator says, "I've been dead." In another story, a man travels with his girlfriend to Rupert, Idaho, to visit her Mormon parents. There, they find "a hand-painted sign, done up with curlicues: FAMILIES ARE FOREVER! Which sounded like a threat."
Although Vestal can also craft compelling stories in the vein of straightforward realism -- "About as Fast as This Car Will Go," for example, follows a young man's descent into criminality under the guidance of his ex-con father -- his stories soar when he frees them from the normal cosmic rules.
In "The First Several Hundred Years Following My Death," there's not much for the deceased to do but relive their own lives. "Now that it's gone, your life is the only thing you have left. Ransack it, top to bottom. Find whatever you can in there, because it's all there is." This story starts out comical but becomes increasingly moving and melancholy as the narrator tries to reconnect with people from his past.
The harrowing "Opposition in All Things" proposes a different possibility for the afterlife. A crusty 1880s Idaho pioneer wakes from his death to find his spirit possessing Rulon Warren, a World War I veteran having difficulty meeting the expectations of his small Mormon town. Rulon's bored possessor urges him to more or less re-enact the pioneer's own life, ultimately behaving like a lunatic, with violent repercussions.
In whatever century these stories are set, they are united in their emphasis on family, and in their exploration of what we owe to and can expect from the people who share our blood, in this life and beyond.
jwmcoaching's review against another edition
2.0
There's some talent here, but unfortunately, most of these stories come off as half-baked. It's unfortunate because there are some interesting premises. The only two quality standouts are "Diviner" and "Winter Elders", and even the latter doesn't completely fulfill its promise. Better luck next time!
jeffhall's review
4.0
Shawn Vestal is one of the most interesting voices writing about the contemporary American West, both in fiction and in his regular column in Spokane's Spokesman-Review newspaper. Godforsaken Idaho is his first collection of stories, and the short fiction format proves to be a perfect fit for the author's talents.
Vestal is a former Mormon, and much of the content of Godforsaken Idaho revolves around the culture and society of that church, including a searing portrait of Joseph Smith himself in the concluding story "Diviner". Several preceding stories deal with modern Mormons, both active church members and those who have strayed from the fold. These stories (particularly "Families are Forever!" and "Winter Elders") really demonstrate Vestal's deep understanding of the role of religion in contemporary America, and how the practice of faith can so easily twist itself into fanaticism.
Vestal is a former Mormon, and much of the content of Godforsaken Idaho revolves around the culture and society of that church, including a searing portrait of Joseph Smith himself in the concluding story "Diviner". Several preceding stories deal with modern Mormons, both active church members and those who have strayed from the fold. These stories (particularly "Families are Forever!" and "Winter Elders") really demonstrate Vestal's deep understanding of the role of religion in contemporary America, and how the practice of faith can so easily twist itself into fanaticism.
mrsellygilbert's review against another edition
2.0
The prose was lovely. As another review said, it reminded me of Flannery O'Connor. However, I just struggled through the stories, the characters were hard for me to relate to, and it was just generally unpleasant.
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