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4.27 AVERAGE
4.27 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was an emotionally exhausting read. I got so entangled with the characters that I had to take breaks from all their turmoil.
After 300 pages I still wasn't even halfway through and had to stop. The story simply never grabbed me from the very beginning, and I just don't care to hear how the story ends. Feels anecdotal--a good story, but no real point, excessively detailed to no end. I gave it a good effort, but I won't be recommending this book to anyone. Those interested in Ken Kesey should have a look at One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest instead.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Good book first 100 pages may need a renread , was a slow start
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
One of the best books I've ever read. Ken Kesey is fantastic. Great plot lines, excellent character development and interesting parallel plot lines that come together in an extremely interesting way.
Pretty much perfect, although it could definitely be in the 300-400 page range. Lee is a new favorite character for me, and I loved how deeply it was set in my home state.
I didn’t finish this, but I also can’t seem to log my reflections thus far without rating and reviewing (argh!), so I’ll submit to a passive 3 stars and write accordingly:
I am putting this book down at page 216 with a sorry admission to my own literary inadequacy. It’s simply too difficult a read and the subject matter too unrelatable to endure another 400 pages. Hopefully I can pick this back up once my frontal lobe shapes up.
This book is reminiscent of Steinbeck’s East of Eden: a generational tale of fraternal conflict with great wisdom woven into each line. Where Steinbeck writes of his impoverished characters with a sort of humility and plain severity, Kesey writes with such detailed complexity and nuance that I simply cannot process it all. Kesey’s prose is probably awesome for a worthy reader, but little old me will stick with Steinbeck.
Can I review this without mentioning the racist and sexist tones throughout the novel? Accurate and revealing as it may be to these 20th century rural folk, I can’t help but agree with the several criticisms of Kesey’s reinforcement of discriminatory social roles.
My favorite passages:
Pg 1: “Metallic at first, seen from the highway down through the trees, like an aluminum rainbow, like a slice of alloy moon. Closer, becoming organic, a vast smile of water with broken and rotting pilings jagged along both gums, foam clinging to the lips. Closer still, it flattens into a river, flat as a street, cement-gray with a texture of rain. Flat as a rain-textured street even during flood season because of a channel so deep and a bed so smooth: no shallows to set up buckwater rapids, no rocks to rile the surface… nothing to indicate movement except the swirling clots of yellow foam skimming seaward with the wind, and the thrusting groove of a flooded bam, bent taut and trembling by the pull of silent, dark momentum.
A river smooth and seeming calm, hiding the cruel file-edge of its current beneath a smooth and calm-seeming surface.”
Pg 98: “‘Man will do away with anything that threatens him with loneliness—even himself.’”
Pg 117-178: “When the tree creaks and tips and goes whooshing down I glance over to check the boy and see he’s impressed by it. That makes me feel better. I’d begun to wonder if it’s possible at all to talk with him; I’d begun to wonder if maybe what a man learns over twelve years in a world so different is like a foreign language that uses some of the words from our world but not enough to be familiar to us, not enough so we can talk. But when I see him watch that tree come down I think, There’s that; just like any man I ever knew, he likes to see a tree felled. There is that, by Christ.”
Pg 200: “Time overlaps itself. A breath breathed from a passing breeze is not the whole wind, neither is it just the last of what has passed and the first of what will come, but is more—let me see—more like a single point plucked on a single strand of a vast spider web of winds, setting the whole scene atingle. That way; it overlaps…. As pre-historic ferns grow from bath tub planters. As a shiny new ax, taking a swing at somebody’s next year’s split-level pinewood pad, bites all the way to the Civil War. As proposed highways break down through the stacked strata of centuries.”
Page 210-211: “I was beginning to care for them. And as that cancerous emotion swelled within my heart so did my poor heart’s fear. Swollen heart. This is an insidious malady chiefly common in that mythical organ that pumps life through the veins of the ego: care, coronary care, complicated by galloping fear. The go-away-closer disease. Starving for contact and calling it poison when it is offered. We learn young to be leery of contact: Never open up, we learn… you want somebody running their dirty old fingers over your soul’s private? Never accept candy from strangers. Or from friends. Sneak off a sack of gumdrops when nobody’s looking if you can, but don’t accept, never accept.. you want somebody taking advantage? And above all, never care. Never never never care. Because it is caring that lulls you into letting down your guard and leaving up your shades… you want some fink knowing what you are really like down inside?”
Pg 213: “‘I really wisht there’d been something I could have done.’ Meaning: Was there?
‘I don’t know, Hank.’ Meaning: You did enough.
‘I always worried about her.’ Meaning: Was I partially to blame?
‘Yeah.’ Meaning: We were all to blame.
‘Yeah, well,’—looking down at the destroyed thumbnail, wanting to say more, ask more, hear more, unable to—‘I guess I’ll hit the hay.’
‘Yeah,’—wanting everything he wanted—‘me too.’”
I am putting this book down at page 216 with a sorry admission to my own literary inadequacy. It’s simply too difficult a read and the subject matter too unrelatable to endure another 400 pages. Hopefully I can pick this back up once my frontal lobe shapes up.
This book is reminiscent of Steinbeck’s East of Eden: a generational tale of fraternal conflict with great wisdom woven into each line. Where Steinbeck writes of his impoverished characters with a sort of humility and plain severity, Kesey writes with such detailed complexity and nuance that I simply cannot process it all. Kesey’s prose is probably awesome for a worthy reader, but little old me will stick with Steinbeck.
Can I review this without mentioning the racist and sexist tones throughout the novel? Accurate and revealing as it may be to these 20th century rural folk, I can’t help but agree with the several criticisms of Kesey’s reinforcement of discriminatory social roles.
My favorite passages:
Pg 1: “Metallic at first, seen from the highway down through the trees, like an aluminum rainbow, like a slice of alloy moon. Closer, becoming organic, a vast smile of water with broken and rotting pilings jagged along both gums, foam clinging to the lips. Closer still, it flattens into a river, flat as a street, cement-gray with a texture of rain. Flat as a rain-textured street even during flood season because of a channel so deep and a bed so smooth: no shallows to set up buckwater rapids, no rocks to rile the surface… nothing to indicate movement except the swirling clots of yellow foam skimming seaward with the wind, and the thrusting groove of a flooded bam, bent taut and trembling by the pull of silent, dark momentum.
A river smooth and seeming calm, hiding the cruel file-edge of its current beneath a smooth and calm-seeming surface.”
Pg 98: “‘Man will do away with anything that threatens him with loneliness—even himself.’”
Pg 117-178: “When the tree creaks and tips and goes whooshing down I glance over to check the boy and see he’s impressed by it. That makes me feel better. I’d begun to wonder if it’s possible at all to talk with him; I’d begun to wonder if maybe what a man learns over twelve years in a world so different is like a foreign language that uses some of the words from our world but not enough to be familiar to us, not enough so we can talk. But when I see him watch that tree come down I think, There’s that; just like any man I ever knew, he likes to see a tree felled. There is that, by Christ.”
Pg 200: “Time overlaps itself. A breath breathed from a passing breeze is not the whole wind, neither is it just the last of what has passed and the first of what will come, but is more—let me see—more like a single point plucked on a single strand of a vast spider web of winds, setting the whole scene atingle. That way; it overlaps…. As pre-historic ferns grow from bath tub planters. As a shiny new ax, taking a swing at somebody’s next year’s split-level pinewood pad, bites all the way to the Civil War. As proposed highways break down through the stacked strata of centuries.”
Page 210-211: “I was beginning to care for them. And as that cancerous emotion swelled within my heart so did my poor heart’s fear. Swollen heart. This is an insidious malady chiefly common in that mythical organ that pumps life through the veins of the ego: care, coronary care, complicated by galloping fear. The go-away-closer disease. Starving for contact and calling it poison when it is offered. We learn young to be leery of contact: Never open up, we learn… you want somebody running their dirty old fingers over your soul’s private? Never accept candy from strangers. Or from friends. Sneak off a sack of gumdrops when nobody’s looking if you can, but don’t accept, never accept.. you want somebody taking advantage? And above all, never care. Never never never care. Because it is caring that lulls you into letting down your guard and leaving up your shades… you want some fink knowing what you are really like down inside?”
Pg 213: “‘I really wisht there’d been something I could have done.’ Meaning: Was there?
‘I don’t know, Hank.’ Meaning: You did enough.
‘I always worried about her.’ Meaning: Was I partially to blame?
‘Yeah.’ Meaning: We were all to blame.
‘Yeah, well,’—looking down at the destroyed thumbnail, wanting to say more, ask more, hear more, unable to—‘I guess I’ll hit the hay.’
‘Yeah,’—wanting everything he wanted—‘me too.’”
Would give it a 4.5 if I did decimals. By the end it did truly seem to be on the scale of a Greek tragedy. Descriptions of landscapes were outstanding. But the female characters seemed like they had no purpose or motivations outside of the men around them. Young Vivan describes how she wants her "someone" to come and she would know him because he would choose her... it was aggravatingly passive. Maybe that just reflects male writers of that time period.
When I first picked up this book, I didn’t think it to be out of the ordinary. When I read the synopsis, I was expecting a run-of-the-mill story of revenge and a cold war finally boiling over — a silly mistake for someone who knows Ken Kesey and what he’s capable of.
This book is massive. Not just in the physical sense (the Penguin edition is 628 pages, with an unassuming thin printing), but also in the spiritual one. The book tells a tale of mythical status. A story of greed, clashing family members, and a logging clan hated by everyone. A main motif in the novel is clash, and Hank Stamper is in the middle of it. All is perpetuated by the immortal words of Henry Stamper: “Never Give an Inch.” It also examines the topic of masculinity and what being a man really means.
Kesey’s ability to weave interlocking storylines into a giant tale is nothing short of magnificent. The book can be tiring at times. Multiple POVs, many times in the same paragraph, and often with each one talking about a different thing. But I promise the journey is rewarding. The ending is one of those that you read, think about for a moment, then reread again because what the hell just happened? It is one of those books that already impresses you, but the more you think about it later on, the more you like it. This is a book I’ll be thinking about for a long time.
This book is massive. Not just in the physical sense (the Penguin edition is 628 pages, with an unassuming thin printing), but also in the spiritual one. The book tells a tale of mythical status. A story of greed, clashing family members, and a logging clan hated by everyone. A main motif in the novel is clash, and Hank Stamper is in the middle of it. All is perpetuated by the immortal words of Henry Stamper: “Never Give an Inch.” It also examines the topic of masculinity and what being a man really means.
Kesey’s ability to weave interlocking storylines into a giant tale is nothing short of magnificent. The book can be tiring at times. Multiple POVs, many times in the same paragraph, and often with each one talking about a different thing. But I promise the journey is rewarding. The ending is one of those that you read, think about for a moment, then reread again because what the hell just happened? It is one of those books that already impresses you, but the more you think about it later on, the more you like it. This is a book I’ll be thinking about for a long time.
challenging
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes