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A review by mattstebbins
Mink River by Brian Doyle
5.0
Re-read in January 2016:
I loved this book when I first read it in 2013, and I loved it even more upon re-reading. This remains one of my favorite books, and one I'll come back to again and again - in the veins of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, River Teeth, and some of my other permanent favorites.
[Five stars for being one of the most perfect pieces of writing I've ever had the pleasure of reading.]
Review from April 2013:
I've fallen in love. No more than a few chapters into the library's copy, I told Kerri we'd buy it - that I needed to dog-ear and mark up these pages. I know these characters, or versions of them, and I know this world, and I know these flora and fauna and goddamn this is the book I wish I'd written. How dispiriting is that - to have an idea for what you think the perfect story would be, and then find someone else went and wrote it better? Because that's what happened here.
David James Duncan is one of my favorite authors, and The River Why is one of the two other books I've read and immediately thought this was my story... but he wrote it better. His review of this book? Breathtaking hyperbole. And yet... reading it again now, it underwhelms in comparison to Doyle's world. I don't know how else to better tell you the love I feel for this story, this place, these people.
I can't make you read this. But if you don't - and if you don't love it - you're a damn fool.
[5 stars for all the beauty, for endless passages I couldn't help but read aloud and savor, for the certainty I'll read and re-read this time and time again until I've its bones memorized and felt all the way through.]
I loved this book when I first read it in 2013, and I loved it even more upon re-reading. This remains one of my favorite books, and one I'll come back to again and again - in the veins of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, River Teeth, and some of my other permanent favorites.
[Five stars for being one of the most perfect pieces of writing I've ever had the pleasure of reading.]
Review from April 2013:
I've fallen in love. No more than a few chapters into the library's copy, I told Kerri we'd buy it - that I needed to dog-ear and mark up these pages. I know these characters, or versions of them, and I know this world, and I know these flora and fauna and goddamn this is the book I wish I'd written. How dispiriting is that - to have an idea for what you think the perfect story would be, and then find someone else went and wrote it better? Because that's what happened here.
David James Duncan is one of my favorite authors, and The River Why is one of the two other books I've read and immediately thought this was my story... but he wrote it better. His review of this book? Breathtaking hyperbole. And yet... reading it again now, it underwhelms in comparison to Doyle's world. I don't know how else to better tell you the love I feel for this story, this place, these people.
I can't make you read this. But if you don't - and if you don't love it - you're a damn fool.
[5 stars for all the beauty, for endless passages I couldn't help but read aloud and savor, for the certainty I'll read and re-read this time and time again until I've its bones memorized and felt all the way through.]