Scan barcode
nobodyatall's review against another edition
5.0
Nobody writes miserable realism like Willy Vlautin. Beautiful and horrific.
screamdogreads's review against another edition
4.0
"It seemed the closer he was to what he wanted, the more lost he became."
Don't Skip Out on Me isn't a feel good book, it's not a book that's going to warm you, it's not going to shield you from anything. No, this is a bleak and crushing tale of one man's struggle to define himself. There's an almost overwhelming tone of sadness to this novel, and it's apparent from the very first page. What is also apparent, however, is that Vlautin is someone who writes with compassion and kindness.
What makes this book so touching, I think, is that it's so easy to sympathize with Horace. He's a young man, down on his luck, that only dreams of being a 'somebody.' Even if he has a twisted sense of what that is, he tries his best, and works hard, and the world seemingly never repays him for that. It's easy to see bits of ourselves, or our loved ones, in Horace.
Despite this being one of the bleakest 'take me home' books that I've read, it was a read that charmed the soul, and I'm delighted to have experienced it.
"Liars and cowards were the worst people to know because they broke your heart in a world that is built to break your heart. They poured gas on an already cruel and barely controllable fire."
Don't Skip Out on Me isn't a feel good book, it's not a book that's going to warm you, it's not going to shield you from anything. No, this is a bleak and crushing tale of one man's struggle to define himself. There's an almost overwhelming tone of sadness to this novel, and it's apparent from the very first page. What is also apparent, however, is that Vlautin is someone who writes with compassion and kindness.
What makes this book so touching, I think, is that it's so easy to sympathize with Horace. He's a young man, down on his luck, that only dreams of being a 'somebody.' Even if he has a twisted sense of what that is, he tries his best, and works hard, and the world seemingly never repays him for that. It's easy to see bits of ourselves, or our loved ones, in Horace.
Despite this being one of the bleakest 'take me home' books that I've read, it was a read that charmed the soul, and I'm delighted to have experienced it.
"Liars and cowards were the worst people to know because they broke your heart in a world that is built to break your heart. They poured gas on an already cruel and barely controllable fire."
conchfritters's review against another edition
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
margeryk101's review against another edition
5.0
Ohmyword. Just finished ‘Don’t Skip Out on Me’. What a belter of a book. A modern classic for sure. Poor Hector. Wonderful Rees couple. Shitty man Ruiz. Just darling and tragic and honest and fab.
kimswhims's review against another edition
4.0
A laconic cowboy style story. Set in Nevada, a young Indian man trying to find his way to becoming an adult and an old landholder trying to find a way through to managing his declining years. Their friendship, kindness and decency flows throughout to a quite heart-breaking ending.
A perfectly narrated audiobook.
A perfectly narrated audiobook.
chrislatray's review against another edition
5.0
My review from the March 8th edition of the Missoula Independent:
_____________
It requires skill for artists to mix sadness, loneliness and despair with equal measures of humor and compassion, and arrive at something beautiful. When anyone — whether novelist, musician or filmmaker — pulls it off, even the melancholy in a work can be strangely uplifting. Oregon writer Willy Vlautin is quietly making a career in mastering this kind of storytelling. The truth is evident in Don’t Skip Out On Me, his fifth and latest novel.
Vlautin first began telling stories through songs. He played music as a teenager growing up in Reno, Nevada. In 1994, he founded the Portland-based band Richmond Fontaine, his raw, delicate voice a perfect vehicle for sharing the lives of the lovelorn and disenfranchised people who inhabited the world around him. He published his first novel, The Motel Life, in 2006. In interviews, Vlautin has said his books were born as a result of certain characters from his songs capturing his attention so deeply that he had to expand on their lives with prose.
Don’t Skip Out On Me focuses on two men. There’s 21-year-old Horace Hopper who works on a sheep ranch in Nevada and wants to become a boxing champion. He is half-Indian (the product of a Paiute father and an Irish mother), small and slight, with delicate features and long black hair. He is a hard worker, confident and gentle in handling livestock. We know this because when we first meet him he is taking horses and supplies up into the mountains to check on the pair of shepherds overseeing the sheep ranging there. The shepherds, cousins who barely speak English — or not at all — have had a falling out that Horace must correct. He handles the conflict with a calm, patience and compassion beyond his years.
Mr. Reese, the other main character, is the owner of the ranch where Horace works. He is an old man, and problems with his back have made it nearly impossible for him to manage the ranch on his own. He is also something of a father figure to Horace. He and his wife, Louise, took the young man in after he was abandoned by his mother.
Horace leaves Nevada for Tucson, Arizona, to begin his boxing career. He finds a job working at a used tire shop. At the Eleventh Street Gym, he meets with Alberto Ruiz, who reluctantly agrees to become his trainer. Horace changes his name to Hector Hidalgo because he wants people to think he is Mexican rather than Indian, because Mexicans have a better reputation for being gritty fighters. Horace/Hector has some success as an amateur, and quickly turns pro. Forced to navigate a world of shady boxing events, promoters and trainers, largely on his own, he struggles to find his way.
Meanwhile Mr. Reese is encountering difficulties of his own. He worries about Horace and wishes the young man would return to take over the ranch. Reese’s wife seems to battle chronic depression, which also complicates his life. Finally, he can’t find ranch help nearly as reliable and conscientious as Horace, and worries about his own ranching future. All the men of his generation have gotten out of the business, either through retirement or selling out. It isn’t a path Reese wants to take.
As Vlautin weaves his story, the lives of these two men are, for better or worse, irrevocably intertwined.
One sees names like John Steinbeck and Raymond Carver thrown around frequently when Willy Vlautin’s writing is discussed. Those aren’t inaccurate comparisons, but they are a disservice to Vlautin’s own distinct voice. He writes in similar spare, clean prose and features characters who would not be unrecognizable to either of the literary heavyweights mentioned, but Vlautin is doing his own thing. His people go about their lives relatively invisible and unnoticed to the rest of us, and he handles the telling of their stories with a depth and compassion that must be learned firsthand by living a similar life. And Vlautin has done that — scrabbling for musical gigs and working dead-end jobs while most writers his age were extending their academic careers. Tiny details, like the sharing of meals, reveal some of the multiple ways that people show their love for one another without actually saying so. Mr. Reese’s love and concern for the troubled Horace Hopper is beautiful: His struggle to rescue the young man is at odds with the idea that Horace must also be allowed to find his own way. Don’t Skip Out On Me is a poignant, sad and deeply moving book. I don’t expect to read a better novel this year.
_____________
It requires skill for artists to mix sadness, loneliness and despair with equal measures of humor and compassion, and arrive at something beautiful. When anyone — whether novelist, musician or filmmaker — pulls it off, even the melancholy in a work can be strangely uplifting. Oregon writer Willy Vlautin is quietly making a career in mastering this kind of storytelling. The truth is evident in Don’t Skip Out On Me, his fifth and latest novel.
Vlautin first began telling stories through songs. He played music as a teenager growing up in Reno, Nevada. In 1994, he founded the Portland-based band Richmond Fontaine, his raw, delicate voice a perfect vehicle for sharing the lives of the lovelorn and disenfranchised people who inhabited the world around him. He published his first novel, The Motel Life, in 2006. In interviews, Vlautin has said his books were born as a result of certain characters from his songs capturing his attention so deeply that he had to expand on their lives with prose.
Don’t Skip Out On Me focuses on two men. There’s 21-year-old Horace Hopper who works on a sheep ranch in Nevada and wants to become a boxing champion. He is half-Indian (the product of a Paiute father and an Irish mother), small and slight, with delicate features and long black hair. He is a hard worker, confident and gentle in handling livestock. We know this because when we first meet him he is taking horses and supplies up into the mountains to check on the pair of shepherds overseeing the sheep ranging there. The shepherds, cousins who barely speak English — or not at all — have had a falling out that Horace must correct. He handles the conflict with a calm, patience and compassion beyond his years.
Mr. Reese, the other main character, is the owner of the ranch where Horace works. He is an old man, and problems with his back have made it nearly impossible for him to manage the ranch on his own. He is also something of a father figure to Horace. He and his wife, Louise, took the young man in after he was abandoned by his mother.
Horace leaves Nevada for Tucson, Arizona, to begin his boxing career. He finds a job working at a used tire shop. At the Eleventh Street Gym, he meets with Alberto Ruiz, who reluctantly agrees to become his trainer. Horace changes his name to Hector Hidalgo because he wants people to think he is Mexican rather than Indian, because Mexicans have a better reputation for being gritty fighters. Horace/Hector has some success as an amateur, and quickly turns pro. Forced to navigate a world of shady boxing events, promoters and trainers, largely on his own, he struggles to find his way.
Meanwhile Mr. Reese is encountering difficulties of his own. He worries about Horace and wishes the young man would return to take over the ranch. Reese’s wife seems to battle chronic depression, which also complicates his life. Finally, he can’t find ranch help nearly as reliable and conscientious as Horace, and worries about his own ranching future. All the men of his generation have gotten out of the business, either through retirement or selling out. It isn’t a path Reese wants to take.
As Vlautin weaves his story, the lives of these two men are, for better or worse, irrevocably intertwined.
One sees names like John Steinbeck and Raymond Carver thrown around frequently when Willy Vlautin’s writing is discussed. Those aren’t inaccurate comparisons, but they are a disservice to Vlautin’s own distinct voice. He writes in similar spare, clean prose and features characters who would not be unrecognizable to either of the literary heavyweights mentioned, but Vlautin is doing his own thing. His people go about their lives relatively invisible and unnoticed to the rest of us, and he handles the telling of their stories with a depth and compassion that must be learned firsthand by living a similar life. And Vlautin has done that — scrabbling for musical gigs and working dead-end jobs while most writers his age were extending their academic careers. Tiny details, like the sharing of meals, reveal some of the multiple ways that people show their love for one another without actually saying so. Mr. Reese’s love and concern for the troubled Horace Hopper is beautiful: His struggle to rescue the young man is at odds with the idea that Horace must also be allowed to find his own way. Don’t Skip Out On Me is a poignant, sad and deeply moving book. I don’t expect to read a better novel this year.
bookqueen_61_'s review against another edition
4.0
I loved this book. I wish I had a Mr. & Mrs. Reese I’m my life. I live in Tucson so it was interesting to see how it was portrayed. Definitely not a small town. I wish Horace could have achieved his dream of becoming a boxing champion. I wasn’t expecting the ending.
stephen_coulon's review against another edition
4.0
The story follows a sensitive orphaned teen from Nevada who abandons his life as a shepherd to seek fame in the world of professional boxing. Vlautin’s style reads like Hemingway except without the nihilism and chauvinism (though it’s not nearly as poetic); the prose is straightforward and lucid; the approach is earnestly sincere, and it is refreshing to meet some characters who unironically follow an admirable moral code. This novel projects a believable dichotomy of good vs. evil in a realistic contemporary setting, perhaps because it avoids sentiment in its brutal depiction of poverty and loneliness. By saving its romanticism for its heroic characters alone it capably develops some admirable and creditable examples of the Hemingway “code hero”. I’ll be reading more Willy Vlautin soon.
rawwbyn94's review against another edition
5.0
A modern-day Steinbeck, illustrating the consequences of the American Dream in the 21st Century.
readwithsamia's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0