A review by serendipitysbooks
Spoon River Anthology: 100th Anniversary Edition by Edgar Lee Masters

emotional reflective slow-paced

3.75

 I'd seen @cheriebooksreadthisyear mention Spoon River Anthology in one of her stories and then it was repeatedly referenced in How to Read a Book since Harriet used it in her prison book club and the women responded positively to it. Clearly, the universe was sending me a message. The book is a collection of poems, which are the epigraphs of those buried in the Spoon River cemetery. Spoon River is a fictional town but is named after the real Spoon River, located near the author's hometown. Through these poems the deceased inhabitants of Spoon River get a chance to briefly tell their stories, while the collection as a whole and the interconnectedness of the poems helps build a complete, and often revealing, picture of a small rural town around the turn of the twentieth century. Some were sad, some bittersweet and poignant. Others were downright juicy and slightly scandalous. Many were revealing of the human condition, the good and the bad, and offered lessons in how to live and not live a good life . I wasn't a fan of the Spooniad at the end. This attempt, allegedly by one of town's residents, to tell its history as an epic, felt out of place to me. Overall, this was an interesting way to tell the story of a small rural town and the people who had lived there. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Rape, Suicide, War