Rating: 
Summary: Just In Time for the Stretch Run
Review: "In Open Spaces" rewarded my slow reading style with layers of intrigue, multiple story lines and a few choice innings of baseball. Like people we know, "Spaces'" characters are seemingly simple, but ultimately tied up in complex personal interactions made difficult by their refusal to discuss anything, with both comic and tragic results. The book is built a little like an extra-inning baseball game, where, just as one issue is put to rest, another rears its head. Why can't these relief guys get anybody out? Well, the story isn't over yet. One can imagine Mr. Rowland as a boy, visiting his SE Montana Arbuckle relatives on the ranch during those dog days of August, the family and local lore boiling in the dust of what must have seemd like a rainless eon. This may help to explain his straight-forward, tactile despriptions that show he's lived it. Rowland leaves just enough loose ends to remind you that, as a reader, you're a participant. If nobody's talking to you about the details...well, join the family fun and have a go at guessing what in the hell IS going on. Slow reader or not, you'll be rewarded with a nice finish, a defining metaphor for Blake Arbuckle's life and for the story itself.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent novel
Review: A far reaching novel with wonderful descriptions of life on a Montana ranch.
Rating:
Summary: MAKE SPACE ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND ...
Review: A friend turned me on to this one. What a stunner! A pitch perfect description of the tribulations facing a family attempting to survive each other and the rough, rough world of Montana ranch country in the first half of this century. The challenges facing the Arbuckle clan are overwhelming and bleak, and yet this book is absolutely charged with energy, life, and passion. I could not get the main characters (esp. Blake, Jack or Rita (ooooh, i LOVED rita), out of my head. And if for no other reason, read this book to experience what I will only describe here as an intense medical procedure performed on an injured (and profoundly angry) cow by lay people with no anestheia, one of the most gripping (and if you can believe it, sexually charged) scenes I have ever read. Like the "Corrections", Rowland captures both the intimate details of family life AND the overall impact of large societal forces (in this case, WW1, the great depression and relentless dust bowl, and WW2). This book is not getting the attention it deserves, it is one of the finest books i have ever read, grand in scope and true in its details.
Rating:
Summary: A treat to read, a welcome change from the norm
Review: A wonderful read. The characters were complex and had depth to them, making them realistic. The book had developments and changes that made you want to read ahead. Unlike a lot of books out there, what was going to happen next wasn't obvious. This wasn't one of those mystery/thrillers that you could figure out the ending halfway through the book and finished reading it only to see if you were right. The descriptions of the landscape, characters, and the changes in times drew you into the world of the Montana prarie. A treat from the usual someone-killed-someone else, weak women who can't stand up for themselves, hero at the end book that seems to overcrowd the shelves these days.
Rating:
Summary: Honest, restrained, beautiful book
Review: As a lifelong reader of books written about the west, particularly those about Montana, Russell Rowland's In Open Spaces is as good as it gets. I felt the same way reading this book as I did the first time I read Ivan Doig's "This House of Sky," which is a classic and personal favorite. Rowland writes with simplicity, honesty, and restraint. I've met these people before, or seen them in their pickups, at the county fair, in the rodeo. And instead of caricatures, the characters are real, vulnerable, and truthfully enigmatic. This is a powerful book, and important not only for what it says but for what it doesn't. I hope this is the beginning of a long and successful career. Great work.
C.J. Box
Author of "Open Season" and "Savage Run"
Rating:
Summary: Finely Homespun
Review: Friends ask me why I read fiction, since it's "not real," and I've always maintained that I get a finer appreciation for life, politics, geography, culture, what have you, including history, which comes alive - the facts as well as the feel of it - through a good story. That is the case with this novel of eastern Montana. It has classic American elements: baseball, the west, hard work ethic, a love story, and a big boisterous family, like old big boisterous families, with its own sense of ideosynractic mystery. The patient pace and brusque, delightful simplicity of the narrative calls to mind the oral storytelling tradition, a style that seems to match the stubborn resilience of the people and the land of the setting. I liked this book a heck of a lot.
Rating:
Summary: Finely Homespun
Review: Friends ask me why I read fiction, since it's "not real," and I've always maintained that I get a finer appreciation for life, politics, geography, culture, what have you, including history, which comes alive - the facts as well as the feel of it - through a good story. That is the case with this novel of eastern Montana. It has classic American elements: baseball, the west, hard work ethic, a love story, and a big boisterous family, like old big boisterous families, with its own sense of ideosynractic mystery. The patient pace and brusque, delightful simplicity of the narrative calls to mind the oral storytelling tradition, a style that seems to match the stubborn resilience of the people and the land of the setting. I liked this book a heck of a lot.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: I bought this book after a friend raved about it. Needless to say, I was not disappointed. Rowland's quiet, clean writing fairly roils with an undercurrent of emotion. The plot - deceptively simple - drew me in and kept me reading when I had important things to do, and I found myself thinking about the characters long after I'd closed the book.
Rating:
Summary: Quietly Devastating
Review: I bought this book after hearing the author read at a book signing. When I read the description of the story, it didn't grab me especially so, but after hearing passages from the book I was profoundly affected. This book is beautiful and tragic and inspiring and devastating. The characters are so rich and intense, you feel as though you are in the story with them. The author has a keen knack for observing things about people and putting into words, things you feel but never talk about. This is book is about all that is unspoken. About the things you know without being told, and the loyalty to something bigger than yourself.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible
Review: I devoured this book. The sense of place is pitch perfect and absolutely breathtaking, the characters are so real you expect to see them there beside you, and the images are indelible from page one. A beautifully written saga of the Arbuckle clan, full of hurt--and healing--and oh Lordy, that Montana landscape.
|
