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Jen
Expedition Leader
1384 Posts
Jennifer
Calico Rock
AR
USA
1384 Posts |
 Posted - Apr 04 2007 : 11:54:34 AM
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This is the last novel I actually finished - even wrote an Amazon review, which reads:
A friend gave me a copy of A SUDDEN COUNTRY, thinking I'd like it because Karen Fisher and her characters are rough and tumble wilderness types, much like the modern women in my recent anthology, A MILE IN HER BOOTS. But as it turns out, I am writing my first ever book review because I found many more acres of common ground in this novel than I imagined. With brazen honesty, Fisher explores raw, gut-level intricacies of humanity--and of my own experience as mother, wife, wanderer--with such skillfully terse poetry that I was reminded why good fiction is worth reading. She takes hold of words and reins them in, wielding them with unsentimental precision, molding them with a sculptor's hand, so that you see, smell, and taste them, rubbing the grit of the story between your fingers as you read it.
The rangy, rugged backdrop of untamed America lured me from the cushions of my couch back to wilder times, when the savage beauty of mere survival was a person's daily toil. I suspect, on some level, many of us hunger for that kind of crude simplicity. I know I do. And, as I read, I got to thinking that although the landscapes on which our lives play out may differ, our condition is pretty much the same in any era. Fleeting moments of intense emotion roar, flicker, and inevitably wash cool in the current of time. Events so significant, so all-consuming, in the present moment are rendered memory across miles of unsympathetic terrain. Passions blur, tears run dry. And yet, throughout the journey, we find ourselves evolving the way Fisher's characters do, pushing onward, accumulating dark and delicate scars that remind us of who we have become.
History, wilderness, romance, drama, fiber - A SUDDEN COUNTRY has it all. I highly recommend it. |
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good novel
