True North
by Jim Harrison
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jim HarrisonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-07-10
ISBN: 0802142060
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Grove Press
Book Reviews of True North
Book Review: A difficult and unrewarding read
Summary: 4 Stars
True North
Jim Harrison
4 Stars
It's all typical Harrison, too formulaic, too predictable. Soon as you start reading you can guarantee that Christianity will be mocked, female characters will be easy sexual marks two pages after being introduced, sexual trysts are as common and forgotten as meals served, and every character exhibiting virtue will undoubtedly be a Native American.
Yes, Harrison can take you into the woods as well as any writer, including Hemingway, who Harrison jabs at around mid way through the novel. If you want to cast a fly fishing rod across a river, make love inside a giant white birch stump, or crawl through coyote dung, Harrison's your kind of writer.
However, if you need to see redeeming qualities in the characters you are going to spend 386 pages with, don't count on it with this work. This might be the most dysfunctional lot since the ensemble of the Seinfield sitcom.
It took seven months for me to read "True North", as I fought and fought myself to finish, feeling obligated by Harrison's reputation and celebrity status and my appreciation of his earlier works. After my hopes were dashed with Vernice, David's love interest introduced halfway through the narrative, my disgust and disdain for the novel grew to the point I had to let it sit for a few weeks again. When Vernice so flippantly tells David's Uncle Fred, a man she's met only once and probably is twice her age, "Your nephew is a fine young man except that he wants to ____ all the time," I had enough. I thought to myself, isn't there going to be any one who is truly good or realistic within the confines of this book? It could be me but I can't recall in my fifty years any female, young or old, speaking to me in such a caddy way.
And yes there's significance in the rape of Vera, and Fred's conversion to Zen Buddhism, the liberated humanism of Vernice, and of course, David's long drawn out symbolic confession. The odyssey ends with apologies to Vera; a research project that condemns his father and his Anglo lineage publicly and the gruesome and cruel murder of his father for all his evil transgressions. In the end, without a hint of remorse, all that's left is the sister and brother, again like children, digging a hole in the sand to bury the ashes and fragmented bones of their mother. Thus, the cycle of life continues.
When I finished the novel, outside of the dog-named Carla, I was left feeling empty about any of the other characters in the book. The pages are filled with nothing but drunks, embezzlers, whores, unfaithful spouses, who at any juncture, can showcase their sex organs and instantly gratify each other without a worry in the world. There's such a preoccupation with the male and female genitalia in this book; the mention of it alone could fill a couple of thick chapters.
Though Harrison is the consummate craftsman, a writer of his stature needs to deliver more. As in any great work of literature, at least one character has to express our better ways. In "True North", I feel I've wasted seven months of time with a group of people I honestly would not want to meet, let alone remember.
In the end, Mr. Harrison would do well by taking another look at some of Mr. Hemingway's work.
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