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A review by chrstnareads
Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman
4.0
I love Chuck Klosterman's self-referential pop-culture analysis. I wasn't sure if I would love Chuck Klosterman's fiction. Turns out... I kind of actually really like it.
Downtown Owl starts out a little slow (and reads a lot like Vonnegut). It follows the day-to-day of 3 main characters who live in Owl, North Dakota: Mitch (high school football player), Julia (new Owl resident, social studies teacher), and Horace (73-year-old widower, lifetime Owl resident). At first it seems a little too mundane. Like, why do I care that this old man drinks coffee in the local cafe every day and is upset when he doesn't get to pay for coffee for all of his friends at his table (and why is a chapter devoted to this?)? But then slowly, I began to realize that all these mundane details are what makes these characters real. At first I hated Mitch, and even though he continued to be kind of whiny, he grows on you and you realize he's not a bad person. I liked Julia from the start, and desperately wanted her to hook up with the one guy in town who wasn't like everyone else (dumb and way too eager to please her). She's a little misguided, but you realize she's not a bad person. Horace was annoying too, but in the end, reading about this man's hardships throughout life, he grows on you too and you realize he's not a bad person.
I found myself routing for them, wanting them to live through the horrific blizzard that came suddenly one day. The blizzard was first introduced at the very beginning, but by the time it happened in "real life" I had forgotten all about the foreshadowing. And in the end, the perceived "hero" of the story was a minor character, who had been the subject of ridicule and fight statistic speculation. Mitch sees him as one thing, Julia sees him as the same. Only Horace sees him for what he really is... sort of. I take that back. Only the reader sees who he really is, leading to the realization that there are multiple sides to everyone. You see what you want to see, ignore what you don't, and in the end, no one really knows the truth about anyone else.
It was insightful and entertaining. Picked up as it went on. Didn't take that long to read at all. I ended up really liking it. And, rumor has it, Klosterman has another piece of fiction in the works. If that's true, I'm down.
Downtown Owl starts out a little slow (and reads a lot like Vonnegut). It follows the day-to-day of 3 main characters who live in Owl, North Dakota: Mitch (high school football player), Julia (new Owl resident, social studies teacher), and Horace (73-year-old widower, lifetime Owl resident). At first it seems a little too mundane. Like, why do I care that this old man drinks coffee in the local cafe every day and is upset when he doesn't get to pay for coffee for all of his friends at his table (and why is a chapter devoted to this?)? But then slowly, I began to realize that all these mundane details are what makes these characters real. At first I hated Mitch, and even though he continued to be kind of whiny, he grows on you and you realize he's not a bad person. I liked Julia from the start, and desperately wanted her to hook up with the one guy in town who wasn't like everyone else (dumb and way too eager to please her). She's a little misguided, but you realize she's not a bad person. Horace was annoying too, but in the end, reading about this man's hardships throughout life, he grows on you too and you realize he's not a bad person.
I found myself routing for them, wanting them to live through the horrific blizzard that came suddenly one day. The blizzard was first introduced at the very beginning, but by the time it happened in "real life" I had forgotten all about the foreshadowing. And in the end, the perceived "hero" of the story was a minor character, who had been the subject of ridicule and fight statistic speculation. Mitch sees him as one thing, Julia sees him as the same. Only Horace sees him for what he really is... sort of. I take that back. Only the reader sees who he really is, leading to the realization that there are multiple sides to everyone. You see what you want to see, ignore what you don't, and in the end, no one really knows the truth about anyone else.
It was insightful and entertaining. Picked up as it went on. Didn't take that long to read at all. I ended up really liking it. And, rumor has it, Klosterman has another piece of fiction in the works. If that's true, I'm down.