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A review by citizen_noir
Don't Skip Out on Me by Willy Vlautin
4.0
This may just be the first book I've ever read that comes with an original soundtrack. A pretty good one, too. The author of DON'T SKIP OUT ON ME is Willy Vlautin, a singer and songwriter with the band Richmond Fontaine and a member of the band The Delines. I found this book as I find so many these days, on the "New Arrivals" shelf at DC Public Library. I'm not sure why I ended up picking up the book - some combination of a nice cover and a good first few lines - but I'm happy I did, because this is a poignant story that I think is going to stick with me.
Horace Hopper is a young, hardworking, half-Paiute, half-Irish cowboy on a sheep ranch in Nevada. The owners of the ranch, Mr. and Mrs. Reese, love Horace and have taken him in like a son. They even intend to leave the ranch to him after they die. However, Horace feels as though he doesn't belong on the ranch and dreams of making it as a professional boxer. To become a champion, Horace thinks he must change not just how he lives and eats and trains, but also who he is. He reinvents himself as a scrappy Mexican fighter, Hector Hildago, and moves to Tucson, Arizona to begin training for his new life.
Vlautin has written several books already and after reading this one, I may look some of them up. He is a deceptively simple writer, with clean, clear prose and nice way of describing things. If I was teaching a writing course, I'd use him as an example of someone who shows, and doesn't just tell. An example of this is early on, when we first begin to meet Horace, and we see how kindly he treats the working dogs on the ranch, stopping to cut out their burrs, check their feet for cuts, and then tie a new tick collar on their necks. You can also tell that Vlautin cares deeply about his characters - these are real people to him, real enough that he imagines them in prose and also in a series of haunting songs that he wrote while writing the book.
Perhaps the thing I love most about this book is the time and care given to describing the lives of common people. So often fiction depicts larger than life characters. It's refreshing to read a book that gives as much attention and respect to the lives of Horace and Mr. and Mrs. Reese. As I said, I think this story will stick with me.
Horace Hopper is a young, hardworking, half-Paiute, half-Irish cowboy on a sheep ranch in Nevada. The owners of the ranch, Mr. and Mrs. Reese, love Horace and have taken him in like a son. They even intend to leave the ranch to him after they die. However, Horace feels as though he doesn't belong on the ranch and dreams of making it as a professional boxer. To become a champion, Horace thinks he must change not just how he lives and eats and trains, but also who he is. He reinvents himself as a scrappy Mexican fighter, Hector Hildago, and moves to Tucson, Arizona to begin training for his new life.
Vlautin has written several books already and after reading this one, I may look some of them up. He is a deceptively simple writer, with clean, clear prose and nice way of describing things. If I was teaching a writing course, I'd use him as an example of someone who shows, and doesn't just tell. An example of this is early on, when we first begin to meet Horace, and we see how kindly he treats the working dogs on the ranch, stopping to cut out their burrs, check their feet for cuts, and then tie a new tick collar on their necks. You can also tell that Vlautin cares deeply about his characters - these are real people to him, real enough that he imagines them in prose and also in a series of haunting songs that he wrote while writing the book.
Perhaps the thing I love most about this book is the time and care given to describing the lives of common people. So often fiction depicts larger than life characters. It's refreshing to read a book that gives as much attention and respect to the lives of Horace and Mr. and Mrs. Reese. As I said, I think this story will stick with me.