Butterfly Weed: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Unexpectedly great & laugh-out-loud funny!
Review: I simply cannot believe that Harington himself and this book in particular are not more well-known. The strange lives and happenings in the fictional town of Stay More are never anything less than utterly entertaining. Harington's use of Ozarkian dialects really makes the characters pop out--they often say the darnedest things! One of his other books, "The Choiring of the Trees," is also an excellent read. I recommend them both with equal enthusiasm.

Rating:
Summary: Unexpectedly great & laugh-out-loud funny!
Review: I simply cannot believe that Harington himself and this book in particular are not more well-known. The strange lives and happenings in the fictional town of Stay More are never anything less than utterly entertaining. Harington's use of Ozarkian dialects really makes the characters pop out--they often say the darnedest things! One of his other books, "The Choiring of the Trees," is also an excellent read. I recommend them both with equal enthusiasm.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: This book is incredible. It's written from the perspective of Vance Randolph, a famous Ozarks folkorist in real life, as he is telling it to Mr. Harington. There's more than a couple humorous references to Randolph's work, notably Pissing in the Snow, which is a collection of Ozark sexual folklore, and it's a pretty damn imaginative premise. Which serves well to describe the book itself. It's set in the unfortunately-fictional town of Stay More, in real, breathtaking Newton County, Arkansas. It is the story of one Doctor Colvin Swain, born and raised in Newton County, culminating in a beautiful romance. Harington never ceases to keep me reading, and beyond being a pleasure to read, it's often painful to pause. It's gripping. The majority of the Doc's story is a hilarious, libidinous, pastoral narrative told in past tense, which switches to the present and then future tense, which Harington does effectively, and with magnanimously powerful, emotionally resonant results. It's one hell of a book. I wouldn't hesitate to rate it up there with the best of anyone from Kesey to Steinbeck to Melville. It's that good.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: This book is incredible. It's written from the perspective of Vance Randolph, a famous Ozarks folkorist in real life, as he is telling it to Mr. Harington. There's more than a couple humorous references to Randolph's work, notably Pissing in the Snow, which is a collection of Ozark sexual folklore, and it's a pretty damn imaginative premise. Which serves well to describe the book itself. It's set in the unfortunately-fictional town of Stay More, in real, breathtaking Newton County, Arkansas. It is the story of one Doctor Colvin Swain, born and raised in Newton County, culminating in a beautiful romance. Harington never ceases to keep me reading, and beyond being a pleasure to read, it's often painful to pause. It's gripping. The majority of the Doc's story is a hilarious, libidinous, pastoral narrative told in past tense, which switches to the present and then future tense, which Harington does effectively, and with magnanimously powerful, emotionally resonant results. It's one hell of a book. I wouldn't hesitate to rate it up there with the best of anyone from Kesey to Steinbeck to Melville. It's that good.