Finding Caruso

Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Story
Review: Finding Caruso is a rare find - a book that carries you with it using both empathy and a clear hard eye on its characters. This book about two brothers, told by the younger brother Buddy, is about things lost along the road to growing up - in this case a literal road out of the shack in Oklahoma where the two brothers lived with a drunken abusive father and a shadowy suffering mother whose only offering is extra sugar in their tea when they suffer a beating, a heartbreak, a loss. Lee's way with a guitar and the ladies may take the brothers to LA and success some day, but this book is about the long stop the two make in a logging and mill town of Idaho. But as the title implies, this book is also about the things one finds even as one is letting things - and people - go. Loss is not simple, nor are the bonds that hold the brothers together - bonds that are at some times too binding and at others too loose and at times, all they have in the world. An older beautiful woman named Irene threatens to come between, as does the potential for Lee to be a big star and move on from the people in Idaho who have given them a start in life - the bar owner and bartender and band. When Irene chooses younger Buddy over Lee, it allows Buddy to see himself for the first time as someone with other options than playing the role of baby brother, of being a nobody son of a drunk farming cotton in the dust, destined to dead end jobs and deadened loves. For the first time he considers not just a limited life in which he must hide but a world in which he can act and grow. But her love is complicated by a hidden past, including an Indian friend accused of murder of a woman in Lee's band.
The progression of the tale is masterly - supple language combines with hard luck to create a story that draws one in. Buddy and Lee are characters we care about and believe in, even when we can see them hurting each other or acting foolish. Even their blindness to their own actions rings true. Minor or side characters are, with a few rare exceptions, fully drawn with a few lines or actions, so that one can almost smell the combination of stale smoke, Jack Daniels and soured dreams on the page. Irene is presented as the most complex character and is a bit more problematic. Her dialogue is far more stylized than the others, which marks her clearly as an outsider, but I often found trying to hear someone speak like that in my head would ring flat and affected. Her beauty and mystery attract Buddy, and provide much of the emotional heart of the story, but some of her actions towards the end feel forced into the plotline. Her character as written is both compelling and incomplete.
This first time novel by memoirist Kim Barnes is a real find!

Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Story
Review: I'm moved to write a "review" like this for two reasons: first, FINDING CARUSO is an exceptionally fine novel; and 2) the reviewer from "Philadelphia" is not only wrong, he/she seems almost vindictive, certainly mean-spirited. He/she has posted the same review on BN's site. You might say it's lazy not to write a new review, but it figures, since the Philadelphia reviewer's also a lazy reader.

The story of FINDING CARUSO takes place in 1958, mostly in Idaho, though it begins in Oklahoma, where Buddy Hope, the narrator, and his older brother, Lee, find themselves suddenly orphaned. They have few options and fewer marketable skills, so on another's advice, and at the flip of a coin, they strike out for Idaho, where there are rumored to be jobs. What they find is the town of Snake Junction and a very special bar called The Stables, where Lee becomes a local star singing in a country band. It's at The Stables that they find Irene Sullivan, a beautiful red-head, who's a little older than Lee and twice seventeen year old Buddy's age. Irene's running from her past too, but she's a strong, powerful woman who cannot abide injustice. She also falls in love with Buddy. He matters to her. But things, as they do in novels, get complicated, and Buddy comes to learn that there is more to life than drinking, brawling, and going along with the dominant redneck reality. There's Caruso, there's wine. There's real love and what it means.

It's the injustice of the arrest of the Indian Wolfchild, for murder, that sets in motion what is this novel's crisis. That the "reviewer" from Philadelphia would find Wolfchild's arrest, in Idaho in 1958, hard to believe is sort of breathtakingly dim-witted: it's like believing the police would never arrest an innocent black man in 1960 Philadelphia. Racism was and is a regular and cancerous presence in places like Idaho (I lived there a long time; I know), just as it is in about 49 other states.

Irene teaches Buddy, among a whole host of other important lessons, that justice can sometimes matter more than one's own feelings; that doing the right thing is not always doing what you want. Buddy also learns love, and he learns who he is and who he must become--for, and because of, Irene.

This is a novel that is wise and beautiful. It is exceptionally well-written. It's also, very often, seriously funny (the goat castration scene is hilarious). Buddy Hope is an irresistible young man, and Irene--well, I don't think you can read about her and not fall in love with her a little bit yourself. FINDING CARUSO deserves readers, and clearly it has reached a lot of them who are fine, discerning, lovers of the best books. And most of them, though alas not all, are also smart enough to see what's going on in the book. Read it yourself. You'll be glad you did.

Rating:
Summary: Finding Kim Barnes
Review: If you enjoy not only a good story with an unusual setting, but an author who is a real wordsmith, try this book. Barnes chooses her words carefully, and in almost all situations they fit perfectly. The author becomes the 17-year-old main character, Buddy. She has the ability to watch people, especially men, and pick up the nuances of their gestures, speech patterns, and emotions. The details of the central Idaho setting are so real that you will feel you are walking through, and seeing, them. Although the main review (above) criticizes her as having confusing or unrealistic sub-plots, they are less that than almost surreal experiences crammed into a brief few months. Many of these experiences are the reactions of a headstrong, impulsive man/boy who is faced with big decisions. The only disappointing part is the ending where Barnes flips forward to a much older Buddy, as if to find a way to end the story, and then in the last paragraph reverts to the 17-year-old boy.

Rating:
Summary: Characters flatter than day-old beer
Review: This was a truly lousy book. I was attracted to it by the fact that Barnes was a Pulitzer finalist for her memoir, which I've not read, but the Pulitzer board wouldn't use this novel to line their birdcages. I grant that Barnes is a very good descriptive writer -- very attentive to physical detail -- but the plot was a cross between a bodice ripper and a spaghetti western, with stock characters and totally implausible plot devices. Wolfchild would never have been arrested for murder without a shred of physical or witness testimony against him; one dinner at a local Italian restaurant with Caruso playing in the background would never have been sufficient to turn Buddy on to a life of culture; and the idea that Irene would fall for Buddy is totally preposterous. No point in going on. Don't waste your time.