American Rust
Philipp Meyer
343 pages
Spiegel & Grau (ARC)
2009
Two young men from a dying Pennsylvania steel mill town are involved in a murder and its aftermath.....their desire to leave a hometown that offers no future...the ties of friendship and family that both strengthen and strangle..guilt and innocence, both in a legal and social sense...intensely dramatic...at times, the characters’ interior monologues seem to go on forever but there is a method to the madness.
i find the comparisons to Steinbeck a bit premature, but i see a lot of potential in Mr. Meyer’s debut novel...shades of Pete Dexter (PARIS TROUT) and Russell Banks (RULE OF THE BONE) are strong
this was not an easy read for me since i live not far from Western Pennsylvania...and if you swap Coal Mines for Steel Mills you do have the area where i live..in the late 70s-80s when the coal mines started to close. the characters in this book could be my neighbors and their grandsons..the voices in this book rang true for me, albeit painfully. i enjoyed this book and look forward to Mr Meyer’s next effort
this is a review of an ARC....
2 comments:
I owe the publisher a review of this book. I was ill for some time and not writing reviews. You make it sound interesting. I best get to it. Thanks for the reminder.
Good review. I had mixed feelings about this one. My review is here: http://rosecityreader.blogspot.com/2009/09/review-of-day-american-rust.html
If you want me to post a link to your review, please leave a comment on mine. I don't like to link without permission unless I'm already blogger buddies with the reviewer.
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