Western Book Roundup
The Five Best Books in the West of 2009
The five best books in the West for 2009.By Jenny Shank, 12-09-09
Over the past few days, I’ve listed my choices for the notable books of the year from many Western states. I had tremendous fun reading this year, so it was with difficulty that I narrowed down my Best Books in the West list to these five exceptional books. These are the books that I couldn’t stop talking about, the books I gave to my friends, books from which I read aloud passages to anyone who would listen, the books that kept me up reading late at night—and speaking as a mom with two kids, ages three and one, I don’t give up sleep for just any book. And so here they are, my picks for the five best books of the West in 2009:
Lake Overturn (Harper, 444 pages, $24.99) by Vestal McIntyre
Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America (Scribner, 387 pages, $27.99) by Helen Thorpe
I list these two very different books together because I enjoyed them for a similar reason: they both took a community and examined it from top to bottom, revealing the ways the most privileged and destitute people interconnect, and showing the humanity of every person they covered. Vestal McIntyre accomplishes this in the fictional Eula, Idaho (loosely based on his native Nampa), and Helen Thorpe did this for a very real Denver, delivering the most complex, moving, and nuanced portrait of my hometown that I’ve ever read.
The Signal (Viking, 184 pages, $25.95) by Ron Carlson
The latest novel by the great Ron Carlson is as potent and bracing and as a shot of whiskey. Carlson’s prose is as sharp as it’s ever been, his themes at once timely and timeless. Don’t miss The Signal: you can down it in an evening.
Nothing Right (Bloomsbury USA, 304 pages, $25) by Antonya Nelson
It’s been a stellar year for short story collections. I had trouble picking my favorite. Maile Meloy‘s Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want It is a close second, but I had to give Antonya Nelson the edge because of her terrific sense of humor. I don’t think I’ll ever forget Fanny Mann, a character in the story “Shauntrelle,” who relocates temporarily from to Houston from New Orleans to submit herself to a variety of cosmetic surgery procedures. Her face is so often covered in bandages that her roommate doesn’t really know what she looks like, but Fanny is warm and confessional, and in the end sets out with “coiffed honey-blond hair” to claim her new life in a mint-colored Mercedes. Every one of the stories in Nothing Right shares this rich vein of humor.
American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon (Spiegel & Grau, 304 pages, $15) by Steven Rinella
Steven Rinella takes on a classic Western subject in the buffalo with American Buffalo and tackles it with enjoyable insight and humor. I loved this book’s goofy metaphors, suspenseful hunting scenes, and the buoyant, funny voice of Rinella. His humor even made the serious moments in the book resonate more deeply. Rinella is a tremendous young talent and I look forward to reading whatever he turns his attention to next. (For all you date sticklers out there: I know, I know, this book came out in December 2008. But I didn’t get to it until this year.)
What was your favorite book set in the West this year? Please share it in the comments.
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Thanks for the suggestions!
Dey don't call Montana de Treasure state for nothing.. sumi'n brought Outlaws to Northeastern Montana.
It sure wasn't fur de Cold weather..LOL
brrrrr -22 n Plentywood en la noche
http://www.withoutglory.com/the_musgave_kid.html
Giddup..
Here are a few brief reviews:
"Much of the innovative poetry written in America is published not by the big houses, but by independent presses like Milkweed, and its many smaller siblings. Too often, our poetry is obscure, willfully ignorant of realities beyond the immediate self, and pathetic in its complaint, narcissism, and soullessness. Moreover, the language tends to be prosaic, when it's not self-consciously experimental. Kwasny falls into none of these traps; she writes romantic-environmental poetry of a high order, communing with nature in a language that never sells itself short. Can we imagine ourselves, gluttonous twenty-first century Americans, in a better relationship with nature? Can we see ourselves beyond artificial separations between the animate and the inanimate, between the sensate and the inert? Kwasny shows how, as she refuses to back down under the pressure of material degradation."
–Huffington Post, 10 Best Books of 2009
"Surrounded by new books of poems that seem increasingly thin and merely clever, Melissa Kwasny’s work serves as a brilliant tonic, reminding us of the essential gravitas of poems of distinction. Hers present a richly textured surface and a deeply thought interior, and have a compass that deftly mingles the scholarly page with beauticians’ hopes and tobacco pouches; a naturalist’s tight focus with the wide gaze of a woman of the world; a lyricist’s gifts with a philosopher’s understandings. This is the real-deal stuff."
—Albert Goldbarth, author of The Kitchen Sink