Crooked River Burning

Rating:
Summary: Superficial, gimmicky read
Review: Aside from an airport connection in Cincinnati, I have never set foot in Ohio so I can confidently state that one need not hail from Cleveland, or be a Drew Carey fan, to appreciate this ambitious novel. I couldn't wait to get back to it every night, and thought Winegardner's ambitious tale brought the city to life in my eyes.

The novel tells the story of Anne O'Connor and David Zielinsky, a mismatched couple from divurgent backgrounds who drift in and out of each other's lives over a long span of years. She is wealthy, daughter of a high-ranking politian, and a polished debuttante bored with the snobby rich boys she is expected to date. David, on the other hand, is politically ambitious, awkward, and the son of a colorful hard-drinking union man whose mother took off years earlier to Hollywood where she went chasing a movie career. The scenes in which David and Anne meet and get together at a vacation island in the lake, where David is visiting with his Aunt and Uncle, are wonderful and memorable.

The story of David and Anne is compelling, but not what I really remember and enjoyed most about this novel. Instead, I remember details of the Sam Shephard murder case (David's uncle is an investigator hired by the defense team, and David works on the case for awhile). I also remember lengthy cameos by Alan Freed and his first rock n roll shows; the effort by the Cleveland Indians to integrate baseball (their African American player, Larry Doby, entered the league just after Jackie Robinson, the Dodgers' celebrated player who broke the color barrier);cameos by newscaster Dorothy Fuldheim and black mayor Carl Stokes, etc. I loved the description of Art Modell buying the Cleveland Browns, pushing Paul Brown out to pasture, and essentially guaranteeing a title in a "win now or else" mode a la George Steinbrenner and the Yankees years later. David is a huge music and sports fan, gets his feet wet in politics, and since Anne becomes a newswoman all of these historical figures and events are woven effortlessly into the plot.

The only thing I disliked about the book, and it DID get annoying, was the frequest bizarre second person asides which the author inserted. In a chapter about a newscaster, for example, Winegardner would add footnotes indicating what the future holds in store for the character, as if the novelist were reading to the real-life Fuldheim and telling her what awards she would win, and when she would retire. I don't remember ever seeing anything like it in any other novels.

Otherwise, I thought there was little to quibble about, and a lot to enjoy, in this grand novel. Winegardner's generosity of spirit, his ability to manage a large canvas, and his sharp dialogue will serve him well as he writes a sequel to Mario Puzo's The Godfather.

Rating:
Summary: Superficial, gimmicky read
Review: Beautiful cover on this book. What's inside though, well plodding stories with quote mildly shocking stories about generally sex, sex, and more badly written sex -- not shocking sex but dull affairs, or paintings of male genitals. It started out dull and remained that way, mainly because the characters are wooden, undefined, pasteboard, flat. There is no insight into the human soul. The stories are bland, choppy, plots dwindle and seem contrived. I suspect the author is a decent teacher, telling his students to look for details because he (the author) does this. Yet details don't make character. One thing I hate in books is to see similar descriptions about different people in the book, I question the authors imagination and word usage. I had to force myself to read the last three stories. In a nod to carver he has characters mention same places as thought there were a subtle entwining of their lives behind the scenes. Even this doesn't work. In fact very little works in these stories. Move on and read Carver or O'Connor, or Bellow, or Updike.

Rating:
Summary: Fabulous...
Review: Before there was Drew Carey, the Baltimore Ravens or the "Major League" franchise, there was a big, boisterous, proud city that was neither Northeast nor Midwest. This book ends where my recollection of Cleveland begins -- the fire on the Cuyahoga River -- and in my mind for years, it was all downhill from there. I saw Cleveland as the largest of this country's many burned-out, boarded-up, hunkered-down mill towns, covered with road salt and coke ash, an industrial mistake glaring my state in the face and daring us to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps.

Mr. Weingardner showed me the vibrance, the beauty, the exuberance of a Cleveland in her prime through the lives of his two ironically fashioned and perfectly representative main characters. He chronicles Cleveland's transition from a city where anything seemed possible to a city where nothing much seemed probable anymore, with pit stops on the way for delicious and delectable memories of people and places which were gone before I was even born. This book made me feel as though Cleveland's story -- and David and Anne's story -- was also mine, and everyone else's. It shys away from the homefront forties, the Leave it to Beaver fifties, and the Woodstock and Berkeley sixties to show us how middle America actually lived for twenty-five years, from upper-middle class to lower-middle class and points between and beyond. This book is for all of us because it immortalizes a time an place far-too-often overlooked and ridiculed.

Rating:
Summary: the way we were (blue collar version)
Review: I grew up in the fifties, about 80 miles outside Cleveland; I had relatives living there. this book, in addition to being an arresting work of fiction, is a wonderfully evocative "history"--subjective and quirky--of that time and place. winegardner writes with a marvelous style, which just (but only just) manages to skirt the edge of slick and over-written. This style works well for the narrative, perhaps a little less well for the dialogue, which at times is too clever by half. But the package as a whole is intelligently conceived, shaped to hold our attention, and a very satisfying read. It's also one of the few contemorary novels whose ending is not too little, not too much, but just right. The author will have a real challenge making his next book measure up to this one. It deserves to stand just behind the best of DeLillo, Doctorow, Russo and Tom Wolfe; it's reminiscent of all of them.

Rating:
Summary: The new Godfather
Review: I have lived in Cleveland for 10 years, and I truly enjoyed this book. Mark managed to actually put me back in time in 1948 when Rock and Roll was just getting started in America. His description of the World Series game that the Indians won that year was exciting, and I don't even like baseball. I loved the love story in the book, and I loved the way it ended.

This book is not just a book about Cleveland. It's a book about an era in American history. It's about life in the 50's; the birth of rock and roll; politics of the time; and love, not so different from what you and I experience today.

About the river: It's hard to believe that the river was so polluted back then when it's so clean now -- hard to imagine. We really have come a long way. Cleveland rocks!!!

I hope Mark's next novel will come out soon.

Come and see us in Cleveland!

Rating:
Summary: Loved this book!
Review: I have lived in Cleveland for 10 years, and I truly enjoyed this book. Mark managed to actually put me back in time in 1948 when Rock and Roll was just getting started in America. His description of the World Series game that the Indians won that year was exciting, and I don't even like baseball. I loved the love story in the book, and I loved the way it ended.

This book is not just a book about Cleveland. It's a book about an era in American history. It's about life in the 50's; the birth of rock and roll; politics of the time; and love, not so different from what you and I experience today.

About the river: It's hard to believe that the river was so polluted back then when it's so clean now -- hard to imagine. We really have come a long way. Cleveland rocks!!!

I hope Mark's next novel will come out soon.

Come and see us in Cleveland!

Rating:
Summary: Take Cleveland (please!)
Review: Mark Winegardner's epic novel takes Cleveland as not only its setting, but also as an integral character, in Crooked River Burning. Taking place over more than twenty years in the city's history, the characters weave in and out of touch with factual events and legendary figures (Allen Freed, Carl Stokes) in a way that's both self-conscious and proud. In the midst of Cleveland's terrible problems with pollution, race riots, and corruption there is always a sense that the author loves this city right along with its mistakes.

The two main characters, Anne and David, come from opposite sides of the city (which, in this case, might as well be opposite sides of the world). David is poor and dreams of a day when he will be mayor of his city and Anne is rich and trying to be a society girl without giving up her career-mindedness. Without giving anything away, it's really refreshing to see how these two keep going in and out of each other's lives without the novel spiralling into hopeless romantic mush. After all, this book isn't about them, not really. It's about Cleveland.

Enjoyable and surprisingly informative, I breezed through Crooked River Burning without much to complain about. Winegardner lets his literary tongue wag a little too much as the book goes on, perhaps, and it's not without pretense. The footnotes he uses get in the way and seem lazy...not to mention the most unreadable typeface I've ever seen (in the hardcover edition). However, tackling a subject like this and keeping it enjoyable is quite a task to begin with, and it's pulled off with much style.

Rating:
Summary: Deep Saga Telling
Review: This is a novel that challenges and rewards in equal measure, a saga of Cleveland, a panoply of engaging characters who grapple with the twists of fate in the city and its defining crooked river, The Cuyahoga. How Winegardner weaves his story is impressive, bringing together mobsters and politicians and journalists, and how he makes us care about their fate and Cleveland's in their wake is the magic of grand storytelling. Any attempt at a faithful summary would require more space than I think is justified in giving my opinion here. Others have done well enough.

Winegardner has a great ear for speech. His dialogue is spot-on. He also has a fine sense of what drives people's deepest ambitions. His characters are large and complex. And he obviously loves baseball, America's first sport of choice (which has yielded to football).

I'm currently in the early stages of reading THE VERACRUZ BLUES, his "baseball novel" that's far more than that, akin to Malamud's THE NATURAL in literary strength. He's hooked me again.

Now I understand Winegardner's selection to pen the sequel to Puzo's THE GODFATHER. He will write a worthy book, most likely far better than the original. I can't wait. I've never read Puzo's book, but I will as preparation, call it a warm-up, for the sequel.

This writer is good and here to stay.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, funny, touching
Review: This is the latest in a series of wonderful books by the talented author, Mark Winegardner. Mr. Winegardner, with a deft touch for dialogue, captures a sweeping hisotry of the decline of a classic midwestern city. He brings the famous back to life and gives us a glimpse of a number of different Clevelands. Though this is about Cleveland, it could really be the story of any of our great midwestern cities in the past 60 years. Mr. Winegardner makes us care about his story through his wonderful use of the language. He weaves a tapestry that one cannot help but embrace. This is a fine piece of fiction, and one worth owning and reading.

Rating:
Summary: No More Cleveland Jokes, Please!
Review: Written with compassion for his characters, humor for the foibles we all have, and respect for caring people, Mark Weingardner has written an original, involving and heartfelt historical fiction about the peak of mid-20th century Cleveland to its river-burning decline circa 1970. With heart-capturing chapters about Dorothy Fuldheim, (read the book to learn about this eccentric cultural character and her important firsts), the Cleveland Indians glory days, and the sad repercussions of Willie Mays's (in)famous catch in the '54 World Series, Carl Stokes, the first African-American mayor of a major American city, and other tales of a city long ridiculed, but also a source of pride for its residents, including the leading fictional characters who find love amongst the steel mills, polluted river and ethnic neighborhoods. Who learn that life is something one learns to live while living it. A happy, bittersweet and memorable read. The story will stay with me for quite sometime.