home was a curious thing, like happiness. You never knew you had had it until it was gone

Book Review 

 

Rating * * * *

 

Title: The Big Rock Candy Mountain 

 

Author: Wallace Stegner 

 

Published: originally published in 1943; I listened to the audiobook (Blackstone Audio 2009; read by Mark Bramhall; 26 hours)

 

What is the storyline or plot? 

    Bo Mason, his wife, Elsa, and their two boys live a transient life of poverty and despair. Drifing from town to town and from state to state, the violent, ruthless Bo seeks out his fortune--in the hotel business, on new farmland, and, eventually, in illegal rum-running through the treacherous back roads of the American Northwest. Bo chases after the promise of the American dream through Minnesota, the Dakotas, Saskatchewan, Montana, Utah and Nevada, but ultimately there is no escaping the devastating reach of the Depression and his own ruinous fate. 

    In this affecting narrative, a defining masterpiece by the 'dean of Western writers' (The New York Times), Wallace Stegner portrays more than three decades in the life of the Mason family as they struggle to survive during the lean years of the early twentieth century.--from Amazon.com

What type of language does it use—technical, complex, standard, or colloquial? primarily standard, some colloquial

 

Does the level of language make it easy or difficult for the reader to follow? it is an absorbing story that feels like a conversation with someone telling about their own life, rather than a formal or detached presentation

 

Did you like this novel?  I liked it while I listened, and it's stuck with me since.

If you could change something, what would it be?  there are a handful of what appear to me as needlessly violent or disgusting moments. If I were to use the MPAA system, I would rate this R for violence, which is a little ridiculous given the overall ratio of PG-ness to R-ness. To put it another way, those few scenes could have been expressed in different ways.

 

What were your favourite parts?  Elsa's arrival in Dakota; the fair; and Bruce in Utah and Minnesota

 

Did you like the characters?  I unreservedly liked Elsa's uncle Karl. Apart from him, though, each character was more flawed than not, and some lost their trustworthiness or respect along the way. Liking or admiring them is not necessary to appreciation of this book, which is "about" far more than the individual characters.

 

What is your recommendation?  I recommend this book to readers interested in the time period, in rugged individualism, in realism, and in 'the West' as an ideal of possibility.

 

5 adjectives you would use to describe this text: expansive, intriguing, harsh, stirring, merciless

 

 [book review template 5 adapted from here; the title quotation is by Wallace Stegner, from The Big Rock Candy Mountain ]